Iria

NEW YORK - For months after Sept. 11, 2001, Fire Chief Stephen King had the same haunting dream: an endless wooden staircase spiraling into the clouds, his friends climbing ever skyward, always beyond his reach.

King was the battalion chief in charge of safety for the New York Fire Department on the morning when 343 firefighters died in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. King, who was friendly with nearly half the fire department victims, barely escaped the north tower. His right knee was shattered.

The injured joint slowly healed. His shattered psyche took longer. The veteran of more than 30 years as a firefighter could hardly bear to visit Manhattan, where he had worked for years.

"I didn't want to even stand next to any high rise building as long as I lived," said King, 57, a second-generation fireman with a son now working for the department. "I didn't even want to go over a bridge."

King tried sleeping pills, anxiety medications and traditional therapy. But he didn't get better until he tried virtual reality, pioneered by researchers at Emory University in the early 1990s.

For years, virtual reality has been used to treat common phobias such as a fear of airplanes, storms and speaking in front of crowds. Patients afraid of heights, for example, can learn to cope by putting on a headset with a small screen in front of their eyes, and finding themselves walking across a rope bridge nearly 200 feet above a canyon.

Dr. JoAnn Difede, director of the Anxiety and Traumatic Stress Studies Program at Weill Cornell Medical College, found the practice extremely effective and, after 9/11, thought it could be adapted to treat World Trade Center survivors.
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