He designed a smartwatch app to help stop his father’s PTSD nightmareExBulletin

Tyler Skulzasek remembers his dad as a fun and extroverted man before he left to serve in Iraq. When Patrick Skluzacek returned home in 2007, his son says, he was strange.

Patrick was swallowed by a nightmare. At night, his dream brought him back to Fallujah, where he served the US Army as commander of a convoy. He sweated lightly, sometimes violently, and fell asleep.

The nightmare was so vivid and terrible that he was afraid to close his eyes. The only way he could sleep was to use vodka and pills, he says.

Patrick’s life has begun to unravel. His marriage has collapsed. “”[I] “My house, everything, my work, everything went,” he says, holding back tears.

It’s not unfamiliar to anyone who has served in the war zone. According to the Department of Veterans Affairs52% of combat soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorders have nightmares quite often, compared to 3% of the general public. They are sacrificing not only soldiers but also their families.

But Patrick’s son will give the story a different ending.

Hackathon to help people with PTSD

When Tyler was a senior at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota in 2015 and heard that a computer hackathon was being held in Washington, DC developers wanted to create a prototype to tackle a particular problem. We got together for several days. This particular hackathon focused on developing mobile applications that help people with PTSD.

Tyler gathered income from work on campus and bought a ticket to Washington. During the hackathon, he formed a team to program a smartwatch that detects the onset of night terrors based on the wearer’s heart rate and movement.

According to Tyler, the idea was to use technology to mimic what service dogs are already doing. That is, it recognizes a traumatic nightmare and moves or licks the person little by little, confusing the bad dream. He thought the smartwatch could do this with gentle vibrations.

But the tricky part was “to pull them out of the deep rem cycle and provide enough stimulation to allow sleep to continue unaffected,” says Tyler.

Guinea pig dad

It takes a lot of trial and error to recognize nightmares and respond with the right touch for the app to work. But what is a better subject than your own dad?

Patrick was a game, but the experiment got off to a difficult start. In early trials, zapping watches awakened Patrick. And since he initially wore a 24-hour watch, there were some amazing readings.

Recalling what happened when Patrick wore a watch while using an air hammer, the two laughed and broke up.

“I still remember wearing it full-time. I thought I had a heart attack because I was wearing my watch. My heart rate was 6,000 beats per minute,” said Patrick, who lives in Brain, Minnesota. I thought it was .. “

“I was afraid,” says Tyler, now a graduate student in computer science at the University of Chicago. “Looking at someone’s data 24 hours a day, 7 days a week makes me feel like having a baby. I don’t have a baby, but suddenly you’re always very worried.”

With constant tweaking while his dad was sleeping in the next room, Tyler finally completed the algorithm. “It was very important to have someone near you and know exactly when those nightmares would occur in order to train such a model,” says Tyler.

“Small miracle”

For Patrick, the clock changed his life when they understood the formula correctly. “I turned on the watch and started moving day and night.” According to him, the vibration was a “little miracle.”

After years of suffering, Patrick finally found relief. He was able to regain his life. He has remarried and is working as a mechanic again. Sometimes they have bad dreams, but they no longer dominate his life.

More people will soon be able to benefit from Tyler’s invention.Investors bought the rights to the app and set up a company NightWare..

Last month, the Food and Drug Administration Approved app, Works with Apple Watch to treat PTSD-related nightmare disorders. It will soon be available as a prescription through VA.