February 2022 — MHCE Newsletter

20 | MHCE - News www.mhce.us FEBRUARY 2022 EDITION
Study: Many
Veterans say
Their Outlook
has Improved
During COVID-19
Pandemic
A surprising number of U.S. military veterans say
they feel more positive about life, relationships
and themselves since the coronavirus pandemic
began, bucking predictions of a dire mental
health crisis caused by the outbreak, a study
published Thursday said.
“People talked, when the pandemic was
unfolding, that we were going to see an incredible
wave of mental illness, but the research hasn’t
captured that,” one of the study’s authors, Dr.
Robert Pietrzak, told Stars and Stripes. He heads
the Translational Psychiatric Epidemiology
Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Veterans
Affairs’ National Center for PTSD.
More than 3,000 veterans were surveyed
between November 2019 and March 2020 —
before COVID-19 had been declared a pandemic
by the World Health Organization — and again
in November and December 2020 when the
pandemic was in full swing. Of those, 43% said
they had experienced positive psychological
changes despite lockdowns, isolation, economic
hardship and illness.
The most notable change was a greater
appreciation for life, followed by closer personal
relationships and an enhanced sense of personal
strength, the study found.
Positive change was even greater among the
13% of veterans who said they had virus-related
post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the
study published in the Journal of the American
Medical Association. Of those, 70% reported
having a more positive outlook during the
pandemic.
The researchers were “startled that this
is happening,” said Pietrzak, an associate
professor of psychiatry and public health at Yale
University.
“Every morning, everything is negative
about the pandemic. It’s all about depression,
insomnia, substance abuse. But we also have
positive things occurring,” he said.
All the veterans who took part in the survey
lived in their own homes. Most were men.
Having had COVID-19 did not influence whether
they were able to move on from the trauma of
the pandemic to post-traumatic growth.
While trauma can increase the risk of mental
disorders such as PTSD, Pietrzak said, it can
also spur beneficial changes.
“By no means are we trying to put out the
message that people should get infected and
COVID is a good thing, and we don’t want
to minimize anything — there are subsets of
people who are suffering quite a bit,” he said.
“But we are seeing both the negative and the
positive, and the positive so far outweighs the
negative.”
Post-traumatic growth occurs naturally and
is often seen in people with PTSD symptoms
because “you need a wound to heal,” Pietrzak
said.
“Post-traumatic growth is stimulated by
reflective processing about a traumatic event,
and sometimes you need to be sufficiently
shaken by an experience and experience
symptoms of PTSD to begin to process it at a
deeper level.”
A follow-up survey is planned for 2022, he said,
when the pandemic is “hopefully over.”