WASHINGTON — An innovative technique to identify post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, in Ukraine’s serving military, war veterans and related adverse effects on their families was presented by its American designers at a meeting in Kyiv on Aug. 23 that President Volodymyr Zelensky was scheduled to attend.
American company Future Life has developed algorithms for computer software, which combines artificial intelligence, computerized databases, and psychiatrists’ know-how to interpret the stream of tell-tale information transmitted by involuntary minute changes of expression on a person’s face when talking.
Called Face2Face is being tested by the American military to detect PTSD in war veterans and serving soldiers and by law enforcement involved in countering drug and alcohol abuse.
Many servicemen and women are reluctant to admit that they have been profoundly changed by brutal or horrific war experiences. The reasons vary and include fear of being stigmatized as somehow “mentally ill,” being considered “weak” or even feeling guilty at what happened.
Without swift diagnosis and treatment concealed PTSD can manifest itself in depression, sleeplessness, anti-social behavior, aggression toward family and friends, drug and alcohol abuse. Surveys of veterans in the U.S. have charted how, unaddressed, PTSD can break up marriages and families, ruin lives and lead to suicide.
Research in Ukraine has shown the same terrible effects on Ukrainian veterans and that often entire families suffer as a result of the soldier’s experience.
The Ukrainian military attache in Washington became aware of the technique while looking for ways to improve detection and treatment of Ukrainian service personnel, serving or veterans, suffering from PTSD.
That resulted in Future Life being invited to present its technology at the “Second International Volunteer and Veterans Forum” at the Mystetskiy Arsenal art complex and museum in Kyiv.
The forum was hosted by the Ministry of Veterans Affairs and NGOs interested in helping soldiers and veterans such as “Come back alive.”
Zelensky was expected to speak at the forum’s opening and some of his senior administration and National Security and Defense Council officials will attend the discussions. The United States Agency for International Development is supporting the event and William Taylor, Charge d’Affaires (acting ambassador) at the U.S. embassy in Kyiv, was invited.
Whether the Ministry of Veterans Affairs will survive as a separate body has been under review because the new administration wants to par down government structures with speculation it might be absorbed by the Ministry of Health or Ministry of Social Protection. However, President Zelensky said he wants it to remain.
Acting Minister for Health, Ulana Suprun, was invited to speak at the forum about the medical and social rehabilitation of Ukraine’s wounded warriors.
Creating an emotional footprint
Director of Business Development at Future Life, Aaron Brodsky, explained how Face2Face works to forum participants.
The technology uses video images captured each one-thirtieth (1/30th) of a second to analyze Facial Micro-Expressions of Emotion (FMEEs) that are too rapid for normal observation.
Celia Straus, an expert, author and researcher on veteran’s issues including mental health, is communications director for Future Life in Washington and told the Kyiv Post the technique monitors six “essential emotions” – anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise and neutrality. She said research going back to the 1960s has shown the same basic set of facial muscle movements reflect identical human emotions all over the world.
She said the only equipment required is a camera to record the subject’s FMEEs and a computer with Face2Face software.
The technique measures the relative movements of 1,950 “facial landmarks” per second and compares them to a huge database of images to produce an “emotional footprint” depicted in graph form with different colors representing the six tracked emotions.
Straus said that those operating the technique need not be doctors or psychiatrists. Others such as military officers and chaplains could be trained within a matter of days. The operator asking the questions and the subject replying to them could be together in the same room or far apart.
An advantage of the system is that the key points of the resulting colored graphs are easy for the subject/patient to understand. The graphs may show that the emotions at the root of the subject’s distress are not the ones superficial observation might indicate. For example the subject may appear full of anger but the graph could show that actually the underlying troubling factor is sadness.
That clarity, she said, can grow trust between the subject and the person helping them and they can work together on the treatment.
The apparatus can also monitor how the treatment is proceeding. The Face2Face system, said Straus, speeds up the entire procedure of identifying and treating PTSD. In the U.S. there are far too few therapists to treat all the veterans suffering from PTSD. Treatment, which routinely involves asking the subject to recall and replay in minute detail the events around the traumatic episode, can go on for so long that patients cease seeing the therapist before they are healed. But not completing the therapy, after resurrecting disturbing memories, can leave the patient in a worse state than before.
Suprun called Face2Face interesting. She said: “It is true that veterans are not eager to say they have PTSD and that making it [the consultation with the health worker] more ‘clinical’ rather than psychological, would help them to seek help.”
Commenting on the future of the Ministry of Veterans’ Affairs, she said a separate committee of veteran’s affairs in the Parliament has already gone. “It is problematic, because there are 390,000 veterans just from the Russian-Ukrainian war. And over a million others,” said Suprun. She believes having an agency rather than a Ministry for veterans could work. However, not having a seat at the Cabinet of Ministers would weaken the position of those lobbying for resources for veterans’ needs.
Straus said some of the tests involving American servicemen had been carried out remotely with the subject sitting in a tent in an Afghan war zone and their image transmitted hundreds of kilometers using a mobile phone. She said that Ukrainian veterans who live far from centers that are supposed to cater for their needs, could receive consultations remotely.
Straus said Face2Face had been prompted by the desire to stem the tide of suicides caused by PTSD. In the U.S. some 68 former service people attempt suicide each day, with around 20 of them succeeding. Ukraine also has a high incidence of suicide among military veterans.
Straus said that as the company developed the software at the core of the technique, they realized its potential extended far beyond the detection of PTSD. She said it could be applied to monitor the psychological wellbeing and fitness for duty of military personnel throughout their service and even after they have left. Problems could be detected by mapping emotional footprints at regular intervals rather than relying on the serviceperson’s self-report or subjective observations by others.
The technique can also be used to spot deception, according to Brodsky “999 times out of 1000.”
The Kyiv Post wrote last month about how it was used to demonstrate that Kremlin dictator Vladimir Putin was lying when denying Russian responsibility for shooting down the Malaysian airliner flight MH17 over Ukraine on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 people aboard.
Brodsky said his colleagues analyzed a YouTube video of Putin, which is still available for anyone to view, of an interview where he is questioned closely about MH17 and other Russian actions in Ukraine.
By analyzing just his FMEEs without the audio of what he was saying they highlighted, in the resulting graphs, Putin displaying and trying to mask an un-natural combination of emotions when he responds to persistent questions about the aircraft’s destruction – clear indications of lying.
Straus said the company hopes to give additional presentations to interested military and civilian officials that will enable Ukraine to decide whether it wants to buy the technology.
