- In 2007, working with Iraq War veterans at Camp Pendleton, occupational therapist Carly Rogers of the University of California, Los Angeles blended surfing and talk therapy into a treatment for PTSD. In a 2014 paper published in the Journal of Occupational Therapy, Rogers reported that after as little as five weeks in the waves, soldiers had a “clinically meaningful improvement in PTSD symptom severity and in depressive symptoms.”