Loss of life, unseen threats: For veterans with PTSD, pandemic ‘feels a lot like wartime’

“A drastic regression”

Last March, Navy veteran Aaron Jones was spending most of his time designing dresses in pursuit of a fashion degree at Missouri State University. It was a new chapter for Jones, 44, a native of Missouri, as well as a form of therapy for his PTSD, which had previously driven him to two suicide attempts. 

Jones had served three tours in Iraq, where his duties included treating wounded Marines in the middle of combat zones. For years afterward, he struggled to walk through wide-open spaces, like a parking lot, and he would break out into a sprint or skirt the perimeter. 

He managed to overcome those fears and was thriving in his new role as a fashion student. But when the pandemic hit, Jones’ demons returned. He became enraged by students who refused to wear masks. 

“’You’re trying to kill me then, aren’t you?’” Jones said he would think to himself.

His anger – and fear – continued to build. By August, he had dropped out of school and stopped leaving the house. 

“Having that purpose taken away, for me, ripped my soul,” Jones said. “The depression, the social anxiety – everything is stacked, magnified.”

These days, Jones can hardly remember what it feels like to want to create something beautiful. He keeps his sewing machine in the garage and has taken to shooting practice at night in his backyard several times a week. 

He has papered the walls of his home with dark and disturbing images, which he says make him feel protected.

“It has been a drastic regression with his mental health since the pandemic started,” said his wife Nicole. The pair are in the process of separating but remain close. “He has isolated to a very dangerous degree.”

Jones said he considers it a good day when he manages to complete basic tasks. 

“Getting up, brushing teeth, walking the dog,” he said. “Bad days are going, ‘Nope, can’t even think about it.’”

Some weeks, the bad days outnumber the good. Late last month, Jones, who had previously overcome a fear of crowds, abandoned his grocery cart in the middle of the store because he couldn’t handle it. 

Experts say that kind of response isn’t surprising. PTSD often leaves people with the feeling that danger is everywhere. 

And for veterans who have spent years trying to unlearn fear of public places, the virus has challenged a key premise of recovery: their safety.

“Everyone who has a diagnosis of PTSD has experienced a situation in which they themselves or someone that they care about very deeply was either threatened with the loss of life or did lose their lives,” said Dr. Rebecca Van Horn, medical director of the Road Home Program at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, which provides mental health support to veterans and their families. “And we’re in a situation right now where that is a reality every single day just by going about your daily business.”

“It’s a really untenable situation,” she added.

“Really detrimental in the long term”

Last May and June, the nonprofit Wounded Warrior Project surveyed nearly 30,000 injured veterans who served after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and found that over half reported declines in their mental health during the pandemic.

Veterans who reported experiencing PTSD or depression were about three times as likely to face hardships in the pandemic, according to a follow-up white paper by the Wounded Warrior Project. The hardships, which the group defines as declines in mental, physical or social welfare, are intertwined with other burdens that affect wounded veterans, like unemployment. 

People with PTSD often must work hard to break out of isolation patterns. With the lingering pandemic, doctors who treat the population worry about the likelihood that PTSD sufferers will revert to old tendencies. 

“They avoid triggers, they avoid stimulus, they avoid a lot of things in order to not be triggered towards re-experiencing trauma,” said Dr. Gary Wynn, a psychiatrist and senior scientist at the Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress at the Uniformed Services University in Bethesda, Maryland. “While that’s adaptive behavior in the short term, it is really detrimental in the long term.” 

For Sergio Alfaro, 38, quarantine feels a lot like his some of his darkest days since coming home from Iraq.

“I was fighting for so long not to isolate, to try to communicate with other people and stay in touch with other people,” he said. 

Alfaro enlisted in 2000, so young that his parents had to sign the papers. A combat medic, he survived mortar attacks against his encampment and returned home with intense PTSD.  

For years, he dealt with it by disconnecting, becoming remote and robotic when situations would trigger him. After long, sometimes painful attempts to break the cycle, Alfaro was holding a steady job for the first time in nine years when the pandemic began. 

Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com