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You're not broken.
You're out of sync.
Operation Zero maps your brainwaves, then retunes them — using MeRT, the first FDA-cleared, EEG-guided treatment for PTSD. Twenty sessions. Fifteen minutes each. No medication, no VA referral, and no cost to Missouri veterans and first responders.
2-minute intake · no diagnosis required · confidential · we call you back within one business day
FDA Cleared
MeRT cleared for PTSD, June 2026. It's the first biomarker-guided device of its kind
$0
Evaluation and all 20 sessions covered in Missouri
15 Minutes
Per session. Awake, no sedation, drive yourself home
Mobile clinics
Clinics statewide, plus units that deploy to you
01 / Why we exist
One more is too many.
In 2023, an average of 17.5 veterans a day died by suicide. For veterans under 45, it is the second-leading cause of death.* Add first responders and the families standing behind them, and the arithmetic gets worse every year.
Almost none of them died for lack of a hotline number. They died in the gap between deciding to get help and actually receiving it — the waitlist, the drive, the paperwork, the copay, the fear of what a diagnosis does to a career.
Operation Zero’s entire job is to close that gap. We removed the cost. We removed the referral. And when the drive is the barrier, we put the clinic on wheels and bring it to you.
No stigma. No barriers. No delays. The mandate is two lines long: zero lives lost to preventable despair, zero heroes left behind.
*U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. 2025 National Veteran Suicide Prevention Annual Report (2023 data). VA Office of Mental Health and Suicide Prevention.
02 / What's actually happening
Trauma doesn't just change how you feel. It changes how your brain keeps time.
Every brain runs on rhythm. Regions fire in a coordinated cadence, and that cadence is what lets you fall asleep, hold a thought, filter a room and come down after a threat passes.
Blast exposure, repeated head impacts, chronic operational stress and sleep deprivation knock that cadence out of step. The hardware is intact. The timing is off. That is why you can be objectively fine on every scan and still not be able to sleep, focus, or sit with your back to a door.
MeRT — Magnetic e-Resonance Therapy — starts by recording your actual rhythm with a qEEG, finds where it has drifted, and then uses gentle magnetic pulses tuned to your frequency to encourage those regions back into sync. Not a sedative. Not a mood chemical. A metronome.
No stigma. No barriers. No delays. The mandate is two lines long: zero lives lost to preventable despair, zero heroes left behind.
03 / HOW IT RUNS
Twenty days,
start to finish.
No inpatient stay. No withdrawal from anything. Most people keep working the entire time — they just block fifteen minutes on the calendar, the same way they would for PT.
01
We map your brain
A quantitative EEG (qEEG) records your brainwave activity and compares it against a reference database. It is painless — a cap of sensors, about an hour, no needles and nothing to swallow. For most people it is the first time anyone has actually looked at the organ everybody has been asking them about.
02
We build your protocol
Your EEG is read by Wave Neuroscience’s clinical team and turned into a protocol tuned to your individual alpha frequency — not a one-size-fits-all setting. A clinician reviews your history, medications and screening questions before anything is delivered.
03
You show up consistently
Each session takes about fifteen minutes. Gentle magnetic pulses through a coil held near the scalp. You are awake the whole time, you drive yourself home, and you go back to work. We repeat the EEG during the course to confirm the brain is responding and adjust if it is not.
MON
TUE
WED
THU
FRI
Week 1
01
qEEG
02
15 min
03
15 min
04
15 min
05
15 min
Week 2
06
15 min
07
15 min
08
15 min
09
15 min
10
15 min
Week 3
11
re-scan
12
15 min
13
15 min
14
15 min
15
15 min
Week 4
16
15 min
17
15 min
18
15 min
19
15 min
20
15 min
Treatment Session
EEG scan
*EXAMPLE SCHEDULE
APPROX. 20 Sessions × 15 minutes = Five hours
Spread across four weeks
No inpatient stay
You drive yourself home
04 / Who we treat
If it followed you home, it's on the list.
You do not need a diagnosis, a claim, or a name for it. If you recognize yourself in any of these, start the intake and let the EEG do the sorting.
PTSD & OPERATIONAL STRESS
Combat and repeated critical incidents change how regions of the brain talk to each other. MeRT targets the timing directly.
Read more »
TBI & CONCUSSION
Blast exposure and head impacts disrupt neural pathways. Treatment supports clarity, processing speed, and cognitive endurance.
Read more »
Sleep that never resets
The most common complaint we hear, and usually the first thing to change. Treatment helps re-establish natural sleep architecture.
Read more »
Chronic pain interference
Pain is a signaling problem as much as a tissue problem. Better neural synchronization can lower how much pain intrudes on the day.
Read more »
Alcohol and opioid dependency
Dysregulated brain activity drives craving. Stabilizing those patterns supports recovery and clearer decision-making.
Read more »
Families who serve
Spouses and partners carry the load at home. We extend evaluation and treatment to them, including postpartum depression.
Read more »
05 / The evidence
SHOW ME
THE DATA
MeRT now carries FDA clearance for PTSD, cleared in June 2026 after a double-blind, randomized, sham-controlled multisite trial run with Texas A&M Health’s Institute of Biosciences and Technology, following a Breakthrough Device designation in 2024.*
The published peer-reviewed literature on EEG-guided TMS is still early and mostly built on chart reviews and small cohorts. We would rather show you exactly where the evidence is strong and where it is thin than sell you a number.
* Wave Neuroscience. “Wave Neuroscience Announces FDA Clearance of MeRT® for PTSD.” PR Newswire, 11 June 2026. Read the announcement.
37.6 %
Average reduction in PTSD symptom severity (PCL-5) among 33 special operations veterans treated with individually alpha-guided rTMS.
Frontiers in Neurology, 2025 · retrospective chart review *
69 %
Of participants who screened above the clinical PTSD threshold, this share no longer met criteria at the end of the program.
Same cohort, n=33 · not a randomized trial *
Headache
The most commonly reported side effect, along with fatigue, consistent with what is reported for standard TMS. No serious adverse events were reported.
Safety profile · individual results vary *
*Individually guided neuromodulation in special operator veterans with symptoms of PTSD and traumatic brain injury: preliminary data from a chart review. Frontiers in Neurology, 2025. PMC11864959.
06 / Where to get treatment
5 clinics, and a mobile fleet that comes to you.
Operation Zero runs brick-and-mortar clinics in the Kansas City metro, northwest Missouri and the St. Louis metro. Where there is no clinic within a reasonable drive, we deploy mobile MeRT units built by VanDOit — the same outfit that upfits our platforms in Blue Springs.
That matters more than it sounds. For a rural veteran, a two-hour round trip every weekday for a month is not a treatment plan — it is a reason to quit on day four.
07 / OUR TEAM
Everyone on our
team
sat in the
chair
first.
Operation Zero is not a clinic that discovered a market. Every member of this team has personally been through MeRT treatment and felt what it did — and that firsthand experience is the entire reason the organization exists.
We do not oversell it, because we know what it is like to be sold something. We will tell you what the data supports, what it does not, and whether we think you are a good candidate — including when the answer is no.
Treatment is delivered through licensed partner clinics, with protocols generated and reviewed by the clinical team at Wave Neuroscience, the developer of the MeRT system.
"Mental health is ultimately brain health"
Fred Walke, CEO, Wave Neuroscience · June 2026
Testimonials
“Insert customer testimonials here”
08 / BEFORE YOU SIGN UP
Our most frequently asked questions
Usually in the parking lot, right before they decide not to come in. So let’s answer them here instead.
Will this affect my VA benefits or my security clearance?
No. Operation Zero is privately funded and independent of the VA. We do not file a claim on your behalf, we do not report to the VA, and taking part does not create a VA record. If you hold a clearance, MeRT is not a psychiatric medication and does not require you to disclose a new diagnosis — but we will always tell you plainly what is documented and who holds it before you consent to anything.
I've tried medication and therapy. Why would this be different?
Because it works on a different layer. Medication changes brain chemistry system-wide; talk therapy changes how you process what happened. MeRT works on timing — how well regions of your brain are synchronized with each other — and it is guided by a recording of your own brain rather than an average. Most of the people who come to us have already been through the medication carousel. That is the normal starting point here, not a disqualifier.
Is this shock therapy?
No. Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) induces a seizure under general anesthesia. MeRT uses focused magnetic pulses at low intensity, you stay fully awake, there is no anesthesia and no recovery period, and you drive yourself home. The most common side effects reported in the research are headache and fatigue.
Do I need a diagnosis to qualify?
No. Plenty of the people we treat have never been formally diagnosed with anything. If you are sleeping badly, snapping at people you love, losing words mid-sentence or running on a short fuse, that is enough to get evaluated. The qEEG tells us whether we can help.
What does it cost?
Nothing, for qualifying Missouri veterans and first responders — evaluation, protocol and all 20 sessions. There is no insurance billing, no copay and no invoice at the end. Operation Zero exists to remove cost as a reason someone does not get treated.
09 / help your community
You can help
Two ways, and both of them are measured in people who finished the protocol rather than in impressions or awareness.
Fund a veteran - $5,500
The cost of moving one person through evaluation, protocol, twenty sessions, and the follow-up scan. A private clinic charges $18,000 to $30,000 for the equivalent. We are about 80% more efficient per patient because the clinic drives to them.
See where the money goes »
Host a unit - $o upfront
If you run a clinic, a health system, or a department, we place a fully equipped mobile unit with you at no upfront costs. We bring roughly $340,000 of platform, equipment, and a certified technician. You bring the clinical oversight.
See how the partnership works »
Enrollment is open
No cost. no catch.
twenty days
If you served as a veteran or a first responder, Operation Zero covers your evaluation and your full course of MeRT treatment. Intake takes about two minutes.