In early 2015, as the west African Ebola outbreak was fizzling out, an unidentified American was medevaced to the National Institutes of Health facility outside Washington, DC where his main physician, Dr. Anthony Fauci, later said this person was the sickest patient he ever treated who left the hospital alive.
Preston Gorman PA-C, age 38, has revealed his identity for the first time since returning from Africa. In short, he made a near-complete physical recovery, but the psychological recovery from the whole experience has been another story altogether. He had a history of depression in the past, and this coupled with very severe PTSD has led to greater disruptions in his life than the virus itself ever did.
I posted this story on another board, and one poster who had been an ICU nurse for many years said that this aspect of critical care has not had enough discussion or research. It’s long been known that people who undergo open heart surgery have a very high rate of post-surgical depression that can last for months.
There is some discussion of medical-induced PTSD in the professions, and some cites can be found on-line. I did a DuckDuckGo search for the words: ICU and PTSD and found many hits. Here are two examples:
Seems like most of this discussion I’ve seen focuses on the unpleasantness of the ICU experience, rather than the unpleasantness of the disease/injury itself, leading to post-treatment depression, anxiety, and PTSD.