Dream Catcher Bracelet

The dream catcher bracelet project was a project that I thought had a lot of potential. This whole idea was that a bracelet they designed could help people that are living with PTSD. PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder, is a disorder that can come along once going through a traumatic event. This can be car crash victims, war veterans, rape victims, robbery victims, etc. The symptoms of this disorder include: flashbacks, anxiety, mistrust, insomnia, nightmares, etc. This group created a bracelet that monitored the heart rate and blood pressure of people with this order. When this bracelet senses that its users are going through a PTSD event, it will attempt to calm the user. If they were experiencing a nightmare it would wake them, or wake the spouse so that the spouse can wake them up as they see fit. This group also created a dog necklace that will give the dog a signal when their owner was going through an episode so the dog can comfort them.

As I said earlier, this idea has a lot of potential. The only thing that I questioned was the blood pressure aspect of it. I was confused as to how the blood pressure could be taken from this bracelet. The other thing that I thought this group could improve on was finding a way to specify when the user was going through an episode, or when they were just doing something else that could raise their heart rate and blood pressure.

One thing that really intrigued me in their presentation was the statistics as to who experienced PTSD more. I always assumed that people who were in war struggled with this the most. I was actually surprised to see that rape and sexual assault victims were the biggest group of people who experienced PTSD. It was also very interesting to see what goes on in the brain when someone has PTSD, and to learn about the aggressive night terrors that victims have.

In conclusion, I really liked the idea of wrist bands to help people suffering with PTSD. If I were suffering with PTSD I would definitely try this bracelet in order to get some type of relief. I also like that they targeted people with this disorder, because often times these people are overlooked when in reality this is a very serious thing.