Seattle Police Division testing mind stimulation headband as a part of wellness analysis effort

Editor’s note: The story has been updated to correct its description of the study’s purpose. The study is testing the impact of the device on anxiety.

A headband that emits electrical current is being tested at the Seattle Police Department to see if has an effect on anxiety and sleep, in collaboration with researchers at Washington State University.

The study is part of a larger effort to promote wellness among department employees and to assess new ways of improving mental health.

“There is a group of people that select into law enforcement that don’t generally think twice about risking their safety for somebody else, but they often have a difficult time taking care of themselves, or accessing self-care,” Loren Atherly, director of performance analytics and research at SPD, told GeekWire.

SPD has a longstanding program to improve mental health of its employees through peer support and other traditional measures. But it also investigates new ways to provide psychological support.

Though the study is short term and is not designed to assess persistence of any effects, Atherly said that “as an effort to normalize access to self-care, this project is already a success.”

SPD is operating under stress exacerbated by low staffing in the wake of recent budget cuts and employee attrition after the protests sparked by the murder of George Floyd, said WSU researcher Lois James, principal investigator of the study and an associate professor in the college of nursing.

Supporting the mental health of officers benefits the community, said Atherly.

“Healthy employees are best equipped to serve our community. Any opportunity to remind people of the importance of health and wellness reinforces that ethos,” he said.

Old technique, ongoing research

The new study will test a device made by Fisher Wallace Laboratories, a 15 year-old New York City-based company sponsoring the study. The device uses a technology called cranial electrotherapy stimulation (CES) to deliver an electric current to the temples.

It’s an old technique: the first CES device, called the Somniatron, was invented in the Soviet Union in the early part of the 1900s.

Fisher Wallace and other companies sell thousands of such devices each year to treat conditions ranging from anxiety to insomnia and depression.

Little is known about how CES devices work. Brain imaging studies suggest they could affect neural activity, and some people think they may affect projections of the the vagus nerve, providing calming signals to the heart, gut and other body systems. And more robust studies of CES effectiveness are needed, say some researchers.

The new study aims to test the device in a large study group with a high mental health burden. Researchers will enroll 200 police department employees, including first responders.

Police officers have “very high rates of chronic fatigue, excessive daytime sleepiness, and they also have very high rates of anxiety and depression and PTSD. It’s a population that I think is desperately in need of interventions like this,” James said.

James is a research advisor for the International Association of Chiefs of Police, and is also working with SPD on a study assessing the effect of short e-learning modules on sleep and fatigue.

Activate the electrodes

The department has already enrolled more than 50 people in the new study since it launched in February. People are treated with the device for four weeks, and half initially receive a sham device for two weeks, as a control. Participants’ symptoms are evaluated by a physician at telehealth appointments and by self-reporting. At four weeks participants have the option of continuing for four more.

In addition researchers will measure fatigue with a FitBit or other device. The care team is providing access to a device made by a Vancouver, B.C. company, Fatigue Science. The company’s ReadiBand, worn around the wrist, tracks movement and sleep and the accompanying software tracks fatigue and predicts mental performance and reaction times.

Researchers will also track adverse effects. One survey estimated that side effects like vertigo and headaches occur about 1% of the time.

The SPD study is limited by its short duration, so whether the device can have an effect long term will remain unknown.

The FDA has allowed the sale of Fisher Wallace and other CES devices for years but is now asking companies to submit clinical trial data to support their use. The company has submitted data to the FDA on a separate study for for anxiety that it said showed an effect, according to a spokesperson.  

The headband is currently available on the Fisher Wallace website for $499 and the company makes no other products. It pulled in $4.3 million in revenue last year and has raised in $2.5 million in venture funding and $6.3 million in “equity crowdfunding,” according to a spokesperson. People can invest in the company via a link on its website to the crowdfunding site StartEngine.

The study could also pave the way for future research at SPD.

“This is our first approach in a suite of research projects that we’re calling practical wellness research,” said Atherly, who has used the Fisher Wallace device himself. SPD has no financial interest in the company. “We’re open and receptive to other projects that might help support people’s behavior and well-being.”

Atherly was hired to focus on department analytics and data as part of the 2012 federal “consent decree” designed to reform the department. His four-member team also works with researchers studying criminology, criminal justice and psychology.

“The promise of the consent decree is to build a police department that is able to engage evidence-based decision-making on a pretty agile basis, and where we don’t have evidence for those kind of things, begin to move the science forward and discover more,” said Atherly.

Added Atherly: “Another component of this is also just normalizing accessing self-care technologies.”