Son creates app to help father suffering from PTSD

Tyler’s father, Patrick, is a US Army veteran who served in Iraq in 2006. When he returned home to his family, Patrick was diagnosed with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and started suffering from recurring nightmares. "I was scared of closing my eyes. They were just horrible, so vivid, I'd wake up thrashing and sweating”, Patrick explains. Patrick ended up resorting to alcohol and sleeping pills to help him manage the nightmares, but the addiction had severe negative impacts on his life.

Growing up, Tyler wanted to find a way to help his father. He ended up developing an app connected to a smart-watch, that would monitor the sleeping patterns of the wearer and start vibrating when it identified that they’re having a nightmare, effectively stopping it. He was inspired by service dogs who were trained to recognized when humans were having traumatic nightmares and then nudging or licking the person to interrupt the nightmare.

It worked like a charm for Patrick: "In that moment my entire life changed. It was literally night and day, all of a sudden, everything stopped. I was sleeping so much better".

And Tyler is very proud of his achievement. “ There are no words to describe the feeling to be able to help him in this way, so we became so much closer because of that. Helping someone that close to you is just an incredible thing to see. Now my goal is helping as many people as possible, but even if it just helps one person, it will all be worth it."

Tyler’s invention has now become NightWare, a software that is built into an Apple Watch and which is able to learn the wearer's sleep patterns and customize a treatment for each individual, interrupting nightmares so sufferers can get a good night's sleep.
NightWare is a prescription-only medical device and has been clinically evaluated and approved by the FDA. Through a partnership with the Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense, veterans with a prescription can get NightWare for free.

Adapted from: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/13/us/son-father-ptsd-nightware-app-nigh...
https://www.npr.org/2020/12/06/943647610/he-designed-a-smartwatch-app-to...

More information: https://night-ware.com/