MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS | 'It was bad': COVID-19 pandemic leaves lasting scars for many

JOHNSTOWN, Pa. – A temporary mobile refrigerated morgue was set up outside Conemaugh Memorial Medical Center in Johnstown.

Obituaries of mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, along with statistical counts of local, county, state and national COVID-19 cases, filled multiple pages in The Tribune-Democrat every day.

Cambria County, for a period of time, had the highest pandemic death rate per capita in the nation among counties with at least 100,000 residents.

People stayed in the seclusion of their own homes or wore masks and social-distanced at six feet apart when they went outside. Children missed in-person class time and milestone events. Workplace dynamics changed, with Zoom meetings replacing water-cooler conversations.

Contentious debates over politics and science occurred. Conspiracies clashed with facts. Families were divided.

It was unprecedented, historic, frightening, confusing and emotionally draining, experts say.

The COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States in January 2020. Vaccines were available starting in December of the same year. Life slowly returned to normal over the ensuing months.

But for many people, the pandemic left lasting mental health scars.

"Overall, I've seen a rise in anxiety, depression and PTSD symptoms in my clients," said therapist Ellen Stewart, from Stewart Counseling Services.

"Some of the symptoms are that they're not able to sleep, they're tired all the time and having emotional flares with their anger. I'm also seeing people who are struggling with more of a suicidal ideation and substance abuse."

Stewart said she sees patients with "red flags," such as intrusive upsetting memories, bad dreams, feelings like the events are happening all over again, intense emotions, withdrawal, irritability and hypervigilance related to the pandemic.

One of the specifiers for PTSD is that it can occur with "delayed expression," as explained in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5).

"After six months of a bad event happening, if you start to have symptoms related to that event, that's one of the ways that PTSD can show itself," Stewart said. "So I think it's important to pay attention to the long-term impact of COVID with delayed expression in mind, because symptoms for clients might not show up for years, even years to come."

‘It was very traumatic'

Cathy's son was hospitalized with a very serious illness in late 2022. He then tested positive for COVID-19.

"I was just mortified," said Cathy, who for privacy reasons did not want to give her full name. "They chased me out of there and nobody else was with him. There he was laying there helpless and I had to leave. It was very traumatic. I went out into the parking lot, bawled my eyes out, bawled the whole way home."

She was eventually permitted to return and care for her son, provided she wore protective gear.

But her son died soon thereafter, followed by the loss of her husband to colon cancer about 10 months later.

Earlier in the pandemic, her sister, who struggled to communicate due to a highly aggressive brain tumor, developed COVID-19 and had to be left all alone at the hospital without any family members to comfort her.

"Not only was it hard on us," Cathy said. "But could you imagine being her, laying in a hospital bed, not being able to talk or communicate?"

All of those losses in rapid succession and memories from the pandemic led Cathy to seek therapy treatment from Stewart.

"She was a godsend," Cathy said.

Medical professionals were affected, too.

Therapists, first responders, doctors and nurses have encountered their own mental health challenges, stemming from seeing so much pain and suffering during the pandemic.

"I think we have been dealing with mental health on that as a PTSI (post-traumatic stress injury) issue because we were thrown into it, as everybody, no training, no knowledge of what we were really getting into," said Eric Miller, a member of the Johnstown Fire Department and Forest Hills Area Emergency Medical Services.

Those first responders regularly had to deal with being unable to stop death and serious illness, the uncertainty cased by frequently changing guidelines regarding how to care for those in need, and hostility from some patients who did not think COVID-19 was real – all while trying to keep their own families safe from the virus.

"People look back now and think it wasn't that bad," Miller said. "It was. It definitely was. I don't like when people say, ‘Oh, it wasn't that bad. We got through it.' We got through it, but it was bad."

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