{"id":357494,"date":"2026-07-30T12:32:42","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T12:32:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/357494\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T12:32:42","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T12:32:42","slug":"racing-simulators-help-south-florida-veterans-with-ptsd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/357494\/","title":{"rendered":"Racing simulators help South Florida veterans with PTSD"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jose Agurto spent 15 years in the Marine Corps. He deployed to Iraq in 2003 for the U.S.-led invasion that overturned Saddam Hussein\u2019s government, and later found himself in Japan during the 2011 tsunami, when a 9.0 magnitude earthquake killed nearly 20,000 people.<\/p>\n

By the time he retired 11 years ago as a gunnery sergeant, the Nicaragua native had seen a lot.<\/p>\n

What he couldn\u2019t do, he said, was talk about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re afraid to talk to a doctor because you\u2019re afraid of what the consequences are going to be,\u201d Agurto said. \u201cI felt like I was in a box where I couldn\u2019t express what was going on mentally with me because I didn\u2019t want to lose my career and was wondering what the Marines were going to think of me. I was leading them \u2014 what example would I have been giving them?\u201d<\/p>\n

Mental health struggles have always been part of a stigma in military culture, a mindset that followed him into post-service life and deepened the PTSD he was already carrying.\u00a0He tried cognitive therapy, medication and group sessions, but none of it stuck.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was like putting a Band-Aid on [an open wound],\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

It took him nine years to find something that worked: Race cars.<\/p>\n

Agurto is one of 25 veterans who, over the past two years, have turned to a program <\/a>that swaps a therapist\u2019s couch for a racing simulator.<\/p>\n

\"AgurtoU.S. Marine Corps veteran Jose Agurto, 48, of Miami, participates in adrenaline therapy research at Nova Southeastern University in Davie. (Carline Jean\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n

Conducted at Nova Southeastern University, the program uses motorsports to teach veterans how to manage stress. Participants can complete the program in one, two, or three-day formats, either over the course of a week or spread out over a schedule that works for them.<\/p>\n

Tom Kennedy, the director of academic affairs for NSU\u2019s College of Psychology and one of the researchers behind the program, compared the idea to a vaccine \u2014 but for stress rather than disease.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou give somebody part of a dead virus to trigger their body\u2019s reaction, and then you gain strength to be more able to handle the stressor,\u201d Kennedy said. \u201cSame idea, we increase the stress through a high-performance race-car simulator, and as we\u2019re increasing it, we\u2019re providing them the skills, inoculating them to be able to handle those things.\u201d<\/p>\n

The goal is to teach veterans to recognize the early signs of fight-or-flight and to calm themselves before they react.<\/p>\n

Veterans face a higher risk of severe behavioral and mental health challenges due to combat trauma, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile we\u2019re increasing the stress level through these high-performance simulators, we\u2019re providing them with the skills on how to deal with that stress and still perform well in hopes that it will generalize out to their regular lives,\u201d Kennedy said. \u201cSo when [the veterans] are in stress with their boss, their spouse, their significant other, folks driving crazy in Miami, they won\u2019t go into rage.\u201d<\/p>\n

The program consists of three sessions a week, with veterans rotating through one of three racing simulators wired with sensors that track heart rate and breathing in real time, while instructors coach them through breathing techniques.<\/p>\n

The wait list sits at 30 people.<\/p>\n

\"AgurtoU.S. Marine Corps veteran Jose Agurto gets his biofeedback recorded during an adrenaline therapy research for veterans on Wednesday at Nova Southeastern University. (Carline Jean\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n

The university is partnering with The Veterans Trust foundation<\/a>, a Fort Lauderdale-based nonprofit that gives veterans, first responders and active service members a route into motorsports \u2014 and for many, a renewed sense of purpose.<\/p>\n

The idea for this program grew out of conversations between the foundation and NSU after Veterans Trust leaders shared their experiences and pitched the idea.<\/p>\n

Stephen Kantarze, the foundation\u2019s director of race camp operations and a veteran himself, came up with the program idea and was one of the first participants.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I went into the program, I was struggling with a lot of things in life and was learning how to use these techniques and implement them in my life. It really changed and helped me a lot,\u201d Kantarze said.<\/p>\n

Through this type of therapy, veterans get an outlet that mirrors the intensity and adrenaline rush of the battlefield, minus the danger.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been to group therapy before, and it just never really clicked,\u201d Kantarze said.<\/p>\n

The lessons travel outside of the track or lab, including into South Florida traffic.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of road rage in Miami, so you get to apply some of the skills you learn here and be able to control the anger that comes in,\u201d Agurto said.<\/p>\n

Agurto, now the lead ambassador for Veterans Trust, which connected him to NSU\u2019s program, said one of the hardest parts of leaving the military was losing its structure.<\/p>\n

\"AgurtoU.S. Marine Corps veteran Jose Agurto concentrates during an adrenaline therapy session on Wednesday at Nova Southeastern University in Davie. (Carline Jean\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if you\u2019re in charge of the Marines, you still get delegated [tasks],\u201d he said. \u201cAnd when you get put out of that, then you don\u2019t know what to do. It\u2019s like a fish out of the water.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michael Garcia, an NSU doctoral student and one of the program\u2019s coordinators who spent 14 years in the Coast Guard, agrees.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think life is harder than being in the military. The military feels like a bowling lane with bumpers,\u201d Garcia said, noting that when the military\u2019s structure is gone, many veterans struggle to find direction.<\/p>\n

His time in the service wasn\u2019t low stakes, and he said he wishes he\u2019d had better ways to manage stress at the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was driving the boat into 20-foot seas trying to go save a sinking vessel, so it was a lot of high stress stuff too,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Other programs in the U.S. also bet on adrenaline as therapy, such as The Follow-On Mission, a nonprofit organization based in California, Mo., that offers similar services to combat veterans and first responders.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s being able to reproduce the physiological effects of adrenaline that\u2019s experienced in combat, but you\u2019re doing it in an environment that\u2019s free of the fear, the anger, the anxiety,\u201d said Follow-On Mission board member Rebecca Jackson.<\/p>\n

Jackson co-founded the organization in 2020 with her husband, a retired Special Forces Green Beret, after racing helped him cope with injuries that ended his career and left him, in her words, \u201cin a pretty dark spot.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe change that I saw in him after his first stint in the car was borderline miraculous,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was the first time that I had seen him grin like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the NSU program grows, researchers hope it can become a model for other universities.<\/p>\n

Interested veterans, first responders and active service members can sign up for this program here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jose Agurto spent 15 years in the Marine Corps. He deployed to Iraq in 2003 for the U.S.-led…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":357495,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[506,19412,113,28,29,249,251,250,571,114,266,115,554,109],"class_list":["post-357494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-lauderdale","tag-broward-county","tag-davie","tag-education","tag-florida","tag-florida-news","tag-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale-headlines","tag-fort-lauderdale-news","tag-health","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-science","tag-social"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357494\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}