Healing 9/11 Wounds, Virtually

(CBS)  This story was written by CBSNews.com's Christine Lagorio

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Stephen King heard bodies slamming down on the awning of the World Trade Center's North Tower with the rhythm of bursting popcorn kernels. It was a soundtrack of horror on Sept. 11, 2001, as King, New York City's fire chief for safety, directed evacuation operations in the North Tower.

When the sounds turned to splintering steel and crashing debris, King thought the tower was coming down on top of him. He bolted outside, only to be nearly buried alive by the skyscraper he was trying to empty.

"I was in the street when the tower was coming down, and I absolutely thought it was going to crush me. I dived into a train station, where debris tumbled down on top of me," King said.

He doesn't know how long he was buried, but once people dug him out "they thought I was having a heart attack I was having such trouble breathing."

He lost dozens of friends and comrades that day, as well as his 30-year career.

A painful knee injury was the least of King's problems. Nightmares haunted his sleep and his memories were so painful that King avoided lower Manhattan altogether. Even the Brooklyn Bridge, which he crossed to respond to the first plane crash, was psychologically off-limits.

Eighteen months of therapy didn't help. But one small tool – a virtual reality program his psychologist designed – has healed mental wounds King said he thought were permanent.

Dr. JoAnn Difede, the director of Anxiety and Traumatic Stress Studies Program at Weill Cornell Medical College, said she saw her 9/11-survivor patients with post-traumatic stress disorder being consistently unable to confront their fear, even years after the attacks.

Because she had seen colleagues use virtual reality simulations to treat post-traumatic stress disorder in a range of patients – from Vietnam War veterans to those with a fear of spiders – she thought to apply virtual reality to 9/11.

For Difede, programmers designed a sensory simulation of the World Trade Center terrorist attack. The dust, the cries, the flames and the caving towers are all virtual images projected in two eyepieces connected to a lightweight black helmet.

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