New wearable device may improve sleep, reduce PTSD risk

Researchers have developed a new wearable device that may improve sleep in military personnel, thereby reducing their risk of developing post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Studies have long shown that sleep disturbance is a core feature of PTSD and one of the most difficult symptoms to manage.
Neither counselling nor medication treatments tend to be highly effective for helping people overcome PTSD-related sleep problems, researchers said.
Recent studies show that sleep disturbance is not only a negative outcome from PTSD, it may also contribute to its onset.
Researchers from Wake Forest University and Brain State Technologies in the US produced an analysis showing that sleep improvement may be a strategic approach to reducing the number of new-onset cases of PTSD in service members who are deployed to combat zones.

By combining estimates of the risk for PTSD conferred by insomnia, with estimates for how much insomnia might be reduced through use of a wearable device for sleep quality enhancement, researchers produced quantitative estimates for reductions in new cases of PTSD, for a scenario where a large group of service members is sent into a combat zone.

"We are very excited about presenting this analysis to military health researchers, because prevention efforts tend to get too little attention," said Lee Gerdes, CEO of Brain State Technologies.
"We think that focus on sleep quality could reduce PTSD not only in the military, but also in police, medical first-responders, and others who have high exposure to trauma," said Gerdes.

According to him, the relationship between sleep problems and post-traumatic stress is highly intimate, probably even at the level of individual neurons.
"Sleep disturbance may be a key reason why traumatised individuals have difficulty engaging neural circuits that do not relate to the stress response," said Gerdes.