Constellation, le dépôt institutionnel de l'Université du Québec à Chicoutimi

Résumé

Victims of fatal injured accidents involving large trucks are mainly non-occupants of the trucks more than 80ï ź%. Therefore, it appears that truck drivers who had accidents are likely to suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder while no research does address this need. This paper tackles this point by the mean of an exposition therapy through the use of Virtual Reality technologies. Our main contribution concerns the fact that we do not only exploit Virtual Reality to expose the user. We do create an environment that offers to the patient the possibility to act in order to recover his ability to face the traumatic situation. For this, we rely on the game mechanics and the personalization of the virtual environment to bring the trucker to be active while being exposed to the cues that are related to its fear. Doing so, he should reactivate his capacities and thus be able to act differently in such a traumatic situation.