Page 47 - Total War on PTSD

changed dramatically over the past 20 years and lessons could be shared”. She spent 26 years in the Navy as a nurse and medical planner and is now head of welfare and clinical services at Help for Heroes. Betteridge goes on to say that “there are so many parallels I can see between the military experience and what NHS workers are having to deal with. This is a conflict situation and we have to make sure we care for the care workers”. “Medical staff are being faced with daily life-or-death situations just in the same way as in Iraq or Afghanistan”, Betteridge claims.
There are also recommendations for those individuals or Veterans already experiencing PTSD, which may be elevated additionally during the pandemic. According to Barbash, “the answer is working with a trained, experienced, and licensed trauma specialist. Not just a general therapist who happens to have also been trained in EMDR. Trauma psychology is very specialized area of mental health treatment”.
Even before COVID-19 made its way to the U.S., the U.S. was a clinically anxious nation. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, just over “19% of American adults will experience at least one anxiety disorder over any 12-month period. Many of these disorders are ones that are already social or compulsive in nature”. For example, people with COVID-19 pandemic, but a number are, especially obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, agoraphobia, acute stress disorder and separation anxiety disorder will react differently to information on COVID-19 than those without these disorders. Globally, we are being told by public health and political officials not to come within six feet of one another, so separation and anxiety disorders could hit these individuals particularly hard.
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