Is Post-Covid Stress Disorder our new legacy?

Part 1: PTSD? CTS? Or PCSD?

“What vanities of today’s science will not be repudiated in AD 2103?” —J.H. Powell^[1]

It’s bad enough that every week sees the release of yet another batch of studies proving that the mRNA shots are an unmitigated disaster for public health—in Dr. Peter McCullough’s recent talk^[2] he said there are now 3,400 peer-reviewed studies linking the “vaccines” to deaths and adverse reactions. But now we also have what might be termed PCSD: Post-Covid Stress Disorder. I propose PCSD colloquially though certainly not as a diagnostic category, since I have no psychological qualifications. But it surely would be incumbent upon public health authorities to research this scientifically. (As always, if you stay with me through the “long dark night of the soul,” there’s light on the other side!)

There’s already an extensive literature on PTSD—Post Traumatic Stress Disorder—a field that developed originally from psychological studies of soldiers traumatized during wartime. Even here, there has been a consistent attempt to deploy a public psy-op by the use of revisionary terms that downplay the severity of the condition. During World War I, it was known as “shell shock,” an apt description given what happens to a human being subjected to a constant barrage of artillery exploding all around them for hours, days, or weeks, and watching their comrades being blown to bits all around them. By World War II, the term was softened to “battle fatigue,” which sounds like soldiers simply worked too many overtime shifts. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder both medicalizes the condition while making it seem a rather more remote, cryptic phenomenon of interest primarily to psychologists. What is not at issue in the psychological literature is the terrible impact it can have on individuals, their spouses and families. It is a form of neurological damage that literally changes the brain—whether forever or not seems to be the only issue up for serious debate.

For a very brief period during the “pandemic,” interestingly, there was an attempt to study the impact of Covid-19 on the public’s mental health, including the peripheral impacts such as lockdowns, job losses, school closures, etc. One study published in 2021 stated:

Pandemics and epidemics have a broad spectrum of neuropsychiatric, economic, and mortal impacts (e.g., Watts, 1999), usually followed by critical social or historical changes. However, the construct and mental health impact of previous pandemics in history (e.g., Spanish flu of 1918, the Black Death plague 1334–1400, and the Athenian plague of 430 B.C., for history see, e.g., Huremović, 2019) have never been empirically examined. The eruption and unfolding of the COVID-19 pandemic is a chance to advance our understanding of pandemics as traumatic stress and try to fill this gap in trauma research and study pandemics’ effects on mental health. ^[3]

This was hardly news. In my literature review of the history of pandemics, I found plenty of damning evidence of the lasting negative impacts on individuals and society. In my 2022 book Words from the Dead: Relevant Readings in the Covid Age, I quoted the late William H. McNeill, a distinguished historian whose book Plagues and Peoples should be required reading:

“The disruptive effect of such an epidemic is likely to be greater than the mere loss of life, severe as that may be. Often survivors are demoralized, and lose all faith in inherited custom and belief which had not prepared them for such a disaster. …When an initial exposure to one civilized infection is swiftly followed by similarly destructive exposure to others, the structural cohesion of the community is almost certain to collapse.” ^[4]

McNeill is speaking here more to the sociological impacts—the impacts on society at large—than the personal. But few who are paying attention could doubt that his observation is playing out before our eyes as trust in authority of any kind hits rock bottom. Even the Canadian Press, reporting in 2022 on a recent poll, had to admit that trust in public institutions was already on the wane but took a serious hit post-pandemic:

“The trust index suggests general trust in governments, business, media and advocacy groups was already falling before the pandemic. The 2018 poll said 45 per cent trust those groups to be competent and effective. By 2020, that had fallen to 38 per cent, and this year it has fallen to 34 per cent. That is driven largely by cratering trust in governments, with only 22 per cent saying they trust governments or politicians, compared with 40 per cent in the early days of the pandemic in May 2020.” ^[5]

I contend this is actually a positive development, since it means more and more people every year are waking up to the continual abuses committed by our authorities against us.

Worse, the divisive tactics deployed by military intelligence to keep the public in line during the pandemic drove an even deeper stake into the heart of a body politic already riven by countless divisions. As the venerable Dr. John Campbell notes in a recent video,^[6] in his view one of the worst outcomes of the false narratives spun about natural immunity and mRNA vaccination—by far—is the erosion of trust in medical authorities, which could in itself claim many more lives in future as people avoid doctors and hospitals like the—pardon the pun—plague. On the other hand, there may be a positive aspect to this new wariness if it causes people to become more proactive about their health, actively questioning healthcare practitioners and doing their own research rather than meekly submitting to treatment regimes.

Getting back to research done in 2021 on pandemic-induced trauma, the study quoted above notes that most models of traumatic stress are based on the assumption that the trauma occurred in the past. It therefore calls Covid-19 “a unique trauma type,” due to its being “a continuous ongoing traumatic stress. (CTS) It would most accurately be characterized as a type III trauma (ongoing), which has a greater likelihood of being experienced as more severe. …research suggests that when a traumatic experience is ongoing, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms become more significant and severe.”^[7]

In this complex I call PCSD, or what the study calls CTS, “COVID-19 traumatic stress is not necessarily related to the actual infection of COVID-19 but also is more related to the perceived/actual threat of the uncontrolled virus and the direct and indirect economic and social consequences of actions taken by different agencies to deal with the virus…”^[8] in addition to any deaths suffered by families—a whole other layer of stress and grief. Making PCSD or CTS a “multiple complex trauma” are the added factors of “the actual economic hardship… the stressors and traumatic stressors related to lockdown and related isolation, disturbed life routines, and family and social life… (and) the loss of future hopes and expectations…”

We all know what it feels like when we’re under severe stress, for example an angry confrontation with someone, when the adrenaline surges, heart rate careens out of control and even our breathing becomes shallow. It’s during such events that violence often breaks out, since the stress knocks out the brain’s higher reasoning centres while the amygdala kicks in with its fight, flight or freeze autonomous reaction. The many unfortunate encounters the unvaccinated experienced during lockdowns, mask and vaccine mandates left us at times displaying less than ideal behaviours. I lost my temper a few times and will always regret it, though I confined my reaction to angry words. Thus, the study I’m citing here states that, “CTS and related chronic stress can cause an imbalance of neural circuitry subserving cognition, decision-making, anxiety, and mood…” Not an excuse, just a reality.

It’s also hardly news that depression soared during the pandemic, with another study reporting that “26% of the general population had PTSD or PTSS during the COVID‐19 pandemic in the United States (Centers for Disease Control & Prevention 2020).” In a recent article published by Dr. Joseph Mercola, he reports:

“From 2019 to 2022, use of mental health care services increased 38.8% among about 7 million adults with private health insurance. Spending on such services also jumped—by 53.7%—during that time, according to a study published in JAMA Health Forum. …1 in 8 US adults use antidepressants while the number reporting symptoms of depression or anxiety has risen more than threefold since 2019, from 10.8% to 32.7% in July 2023.” ^[9]  

To be fair, a different study claims that antidepressant use actually went down in the three months after COVID-19 restrictions were first implemented. However, the study admits that “National surveys in Canada reported increased anxiety, depression, and substance use, with 40% of Canadians reporting a decline in mental health since March 2020,” ^[10] a trend they note as international in scope. Keep in mind, this was at the very outset of the pandemic, before the cumulative impacts of repeated lockdowns and mandates had time to take hold, though the study was only just published in April 2022. Thus, the real culprit for a decline in antidepressant use during this limited window of study is likely due to “restrictions to in-person healthcare visits… It is anticipated that such changes would have an impact on the prescribing of certain psychotropic medications…” Yet another article says that, “just during the early stages of the pandemic in February and March 2020, there was a 21% increase in antidepressant, anti-anxiety and anti-insomnia prescriptions.” This was pouring gasoline on an already raging fire, since “antidepressant use has skyrocketed since 1999… with approximately one in six Americans on antidepressants…” ^[11]

Another US study published in 2021 supports the Canadian surveys citing a 40% decline in mental health, this time noting the terrible impact on our seniors’ population, already at increased risk for “depression, anxiety, worsening dementia, and even earlier death,” ^[12] particularly if confined to care homes. This study specifically references “Post-COVID Stress Disorder” when describing the syndrome. Its statistics are equally shocking, but I’ll leave that to the footnotes so as not to induce depression in the reader! ^[13]

If this were a score card in big league sports, the government and health authorities responsible for this public health fiasco would be racking up higher and higher penalties. By rights, many of these officials should be serving life sentences in prison with no hope of parole. But don’t get me started on how corrupt the judicial system is, or how utterly toothless the World Criminal Court at the Hague where crimes against humanity are supposed to be prosecuted. Reiner Fuellmich quickly came up against that wall in his attempts to build a case for crimes against humanity, only to have his own legal team split by internal divisions. Unfortunately, history has proven that at times of social collapse, genuine law and order is one of the first things to go.

Interestingly, all of the studies I found on pandemic-induced PTSD or CTS seem to cluster around 2021. This grouping of studies during the same year suggests a sudden flood of research funding that has subsequently dried up. Why would social scientists not seize upon the unique research opportunity to track this phenomenon forward in time, especially now that the initial crisis period is over? Instead, there seems to be a concerted effort to whitewash what is quite possibly the worst medical crime in modern history, now that we have abundant evidence the virus was the result of gain-of-function genetic engineering.

Part 2: The Whitewash Begins & Where Recovery Lives

“It became a death sentence to be taken to hospital.” —J.H. Powell, writing of the 1793 yellow fever plague in Philadelphia ^[14]

“Overall, it is very doubtful whether the physiological benefits of even the most expert medical attention outweighed the harm done by some of the common forms of treatment. …Doctors relieved others of the responsibility for deciding what to do. As such their role was strictly comparable to that of the priesthood, whose ministrations to the soul relieved anxieties parallel to those relieved by medical ministrations to the body.” —William H. McNeill ^[15]

Despite all this scientific evidence of persistent PTSD (or PCSD) resulting from Covid-19 and its associated lockdowns and interventions, there now seems to be an attempt to “normalize” these by claiming there were also some positive outcomes. Psychology Today, in what is really an editorial, not a scientific article, says “clinicians have become more aware of and sensitive to cultural differences,” adding that, “In general, people opened their hearts and were kinder, more considerate, offering helping hands to those in need including bringing groceries to those with more compromised health. Recognizing the presence of universal suffering often brings about more compassion and perspective-taking.”^[16] Ruled out of this conclusion is the impact of social exclusion during the rollout of vaccines, when the non-compliant were shamed, shunned, and verbally or even physically attacked, culminating in statements by political leaders such as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau asking, “Do we continue to tolerate these people?”

Then you have the highly suspect conclusion from the UK’s University of Bath, based on a British Journal of Psychiatry study, claiming that, “Results from a new study which draws on survey data collected during the peak of the first wave of the pandemic suggests that being forced to slow down life, as a consequence of lockdown, has had significant, positive impacts for many people and their families.” ^[17] Given the timing of this “study,” right during the midpoint of the “pandemic,” when lockdowns were still in force, this academic whitewash reeks of a psy-op designed to calm a public that other studies clearly show was veering in an unprecedented way into PTSD and various forms of crisis.

This is where the work of Meredith Miller ^[18] has particular relevance and poignancy. Describing herself on her Substack page as a “holistic coach, bridging the gap between trauma and purpose,” she has applied her expertise regarding narcissistic abusers to the conduct of our authorities during the past three years. In a slideshow titled, “Psychoneurospiritual State of Captivity: How the violation of consent took place during COVID,” she identifies the classic tactics of an abusive spouse or lover who enacts a cycle of abuse and violence. This can create a “trauma bond” also known as Stockholm Syndrome—falling in love with and dutifully obeying one’s captors. The goal, explains Miller, is “compliance and insane loyalty and emotional dependency on the perps and the abusive system.” A good recent example of this was the protesters that gathered outside BC Health Minister Adrian Dix’s constituency office in Vancouver, BC demanding the return of mask mandates. They may as well have been shouting: “Give us back our chains! We want our chains!”

Naturally, a key tactic of such abusers is gaslighting, as we saw in the mainstream media. And just as abusive spouses will do, the authorities deployed the number one tactic: isolation through lockdowns, preventing families from seeing their elderly loved ones in care homes or even of interacting with neighbours. Here the goal is to have the “target… fully subscribed to the perp’s narrative,” resulting in “a domination of the perception of reality.” Such isolation and gaslighting ^[19] “induces a state of disconnection… (with) the debilitating consequences of prolonged isolation: increased mortality and morbidity, neurological changes affecting the ability to form social bonds.” This may be why Naomi Wolf recently wrote in a poignant essay about seeing so many vacant, disconnected-looking individuals—including babies—in her recent travels. ^[20] So-called journalists of mass media, take note: “Information control is reality control.” Oh, wait—they already knew that but didn’t care.

The antidote, according to Miller? “Own your reality and connect with others who are unsubscribed.” Early in the “pandemic,” my instincts and well-trained research impulses helped me sniff out the fraud, but even for me there were moments of cognitive dissonance where I felt literally dizzy, wondering if I might be wrong. I had to quickly rally by standing firm on my understanding of reality, rejecting any idiotic postmodernist assertion of the relativity of truth. As Miller says, “information control is reality control.” ^[21] Rinse and repeat ’til you feel washed clean of the lies and gaslighting. Miller’s slideshow is well worth seeing and I urge readers to connect with it at this link.

In my poetry collection, Diary of a Pandemic Year, published in 2021, I wrote in the lead poem: “Fear is the virus. Don’t let yourself become infected.” Well before publishing this book, I had already created a meme to that effect and posted it on public notice boards in my community. (Yes, we still have actual notice boards, not just social media!) Of course, the Stockholm Syndrome types dutifully ripped them all down. But Miller reinforces the importance of not succumbing to fear, noting: “Fear is the currency of control. Get mobilized and release the frozen energy in the body.” For me as a writer, this meant going into overdrive, writing poems and essays plus articles for my local newspaper (when they allowed me to publish stories critical of the official narrative, which wasn’t often. To their credit, they were the only newspaper I know of that published letters to the editor critical of the narrative). I combined that with a daily reading and research practice, reading as many books about the history of pandemics as I could lay my hands on. (SEE Reading List)

Miller explains that long-term impacts of what I call PCSD can include a deep dive into escapism—a phenomenon already well underway before the pandemic, with young men in particular addicted to video games. This is quite the opposite of what’s needed if we are to regain our vitality, our commitment to life. As the old adage goes, “the only way out is through.” Hiding from the monsters won’t work—never has. They must be confronted head-on, painful as that may be initially. This was why I immersed myself in research and writing about Covid-19, resulting in the publication of three books during the past three years, including the essay collection Words from the Dead—the culmination of more than two years of intensive research. The work of the great psychologist Carl Jung offers us much healing potential in what is today known as the field of depth psychology. Miller is offering us a doorway into this pathway. We have only to open it to take the first step on the path to healing. “Reclaiming the power of choice is true liberation,” Miller concludes hopefully.

Conclusion: The Power of Poetry  

In closing, I would just add that, as a poet, I’ve experienced again and again in my life the spiritual power of poetry to heal and rejuvenate my spirit. It has pulled me back from the brink of total despair more times than I can count. In readings from my new book of poems, Blue Communion, I often lead with a short talk on the history of poetry as an ancient source of both political satire and spiritual energy. Here are a few brief excerpts:

In my Introduction to Diary of a Pandemic Year, I ask: “Why write poems instead of simply keeping a journal? Poetry has several advantages over prose. Firstly, poetic language condenses language to its most potent constituents—every word in its proper place and every word carefully chosen to create as vivid a picture as possible. And secondly, poetry allows space for intuition to render the spiritual essence of the scene depicted.”

But there’s something far more than linguistic precision going on here. I’ve long believed poetry is the most spiritual of the arts. My partner and I read poems daily after dinner, as some might read their Bible, their Koran or their Buddhist Sutras. American poet Maya Angelou put it this way: “The idea is to write it so that… it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.”

Poetry thus has an innate capacity that other writing lacks. So it’s no surprise poetry can offer healing to the heart during times of great social and political upheaval. It was reported during the pandemic that young people were flocking to bookstores in search of poetry. I pray that was true. That should come as no surprise—humans are meaning-making animals and poetry is often about trying to make meaning out of a universe packed to bursting with stimuli. The late great Lawrence Ferlinghetti said: “Poetry is the shortest distance between two humans.”

Amen to that!

OTHER ARTICLES on Covid-19 induced PTSD or PCSD:

The COVID-19 Pandemic as a Traumatic Stressor: Mental Health Responses of Older Adults With Chronic PTSD.

Rutherford BR, Choi CJ, Chrisanthopolous M, Salzman C, Zhu C, Montes-Garcia C, Liu Y, Brown PJ, Yehuda R, Flory J, Neria Y, Roose SP.Am J Geriatr Psychiatry. 2021 Feb;29(2):105-114. doi: 10.1016/j.jagp.2020.10.010. Epub 2020 Oct 23.PMID: 33153871

Vulnerability to COVID-19-Related Disability: The Impact of Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms on Psychosocial Impairment During the Pandemic.

Morabito DM, Bedford CE, Woller S, Schmidt NB.J Trauma Stress. 2021 Aug;34(4):701-710. doi: 10.1002/jts.22717. Epub 2021 Jul 10.PMID: 34245605 

READING LIST:

• Plagues and Peoples, history, William H. McNeill, Anchor Books/Random House, New York 1976; updated 1998. I devote an entire chapter to this essential book in my own book of essays, Words from the Dead: Relevant Readings in the Covid Age, Ekstasis Editions, 2022.

• Journal of the Plague Year, history, Daniel Defoe, originally published 1722 and still available in a variety of editions. What’s notable about this account is the London authorities’ use of lockdowns during the 1665 bubonic plague, locking the sick in with the healthy, thus driving up the death count. Have we learned nothing in 300 years?

• The Black Death, history, Philip Ziegler, Penguin Books 1969 (reprinted 1982). Of the theories extant in the 14^thcentury that were totally inadequate to deal with the bubonic plague, Ziegler observes: “…it is reasonable to wonder whether a hundred years from now the theories of today may not seem equally ridiculous.”

• Bring Out Your Dead: The Great Plague of Yellow Fever in Philadelphia in 1793, history, J.H. Powell, Time-Life Books, 1965 ed. (originally published 1949). Quoted in this essay. A chronicle of 18^th century public health authorities who dangerously bungled their response to a yellow fever outbreak with measures that caused harm and inflated the death toll.

• Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It, history, Gina Kolata, Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, New York, 1999. Far superior to John M. Barry’s The Great Influenza (2005), which retails some of the same fictions about the origins of the Spanish Flu that Kolata debunks. What’s most striking about Kolata’s book is how it suggests evidence of a massive cover-up, frustrating historians by the erasure of the paper trail.

• The Politically Incorrect Guide to Pandemics, history / politics, Steven W. Mosher, Regenery Publishing, Washington DC, 2022. Mosher, an expert on China who has been called upon by US Congress to testify about Chinese Communist Party policies, posits a direct link to the Wuhan lab for Covid-19.

• The Plague, fiction, Albert Camus, Vintage International/Random House 1991 edition, translated by Stuart Gilbert. Although a novel, Camus brilliantly captured the social dynamics and power politics of a fictional plague. In my opinion, his best novel. Best quote: “But again and again there comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death.”

• Masque of the Red Death, fiction (novella), Edgar Allen Poe, available in many editions. Best quote: “The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow men.”

NOTE: This list is incomplete and does not include other excellent books by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Dr. Mark McDonald, Dr. Peter McCullough, Dr. Joseph Mercola and Ronnie Cummins, Dr. Naomi Wolf, Dr. Julie Ponesse, Julius Ruechel, and others. In the fiction category I highly recommend Canadian author John C.A. Manley’s premiere novel Much Ado About Corona.

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^[1] J.H. Powell, Bring Out Your Dead: The Great Plague of Yellow Fever in Philadelphia in 1793, Time-Life Books, 1965 ed. (originally published 1949), p. 229. 

^[2] “Modern Medicine’s ‘Great Controversy,’ Dr. McCullough's Speech at the Ludwig von Mises Institute: audio recording:

Modern Medicine's "Great Controversy"

Video:

^[3] “The Impact of COVID-19 Traumatic Stressors on Mental Health: Is COVID-19 a New Trauma Type,” PubMed Central, US National Library of Medicine, Int. Journal of Mental Health Addiction, 2023; 21(1): 51–70. Published online July 6, 2021: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8259553/

^[4] William H. McNeill, Plagues & Peoples, Anchor Books/Random House, New York 1976, 1998 ed., pp. 86, 87; emphasis mine.

^[5] “Canadians less trusting of governments as COVID wears on for second year: poll,” Mia Rabson, The Canadian Press, February 9, 2022: https://globalnews.ca/news/8605841/canada-government-covid-trust-poll/

^[6] “Natural immunity wins,” Dr. John Campbell, YouTube, August 31, 2023:

^[7] “The Impact of COVID-19 Traumatic Stressors on Mental Health: Is COVID-19 a New Trauma Type,” ibid.

^[8] “The Impact of COVID-19 Traumatic Stressors on Mental Health: Is COVID-19 a New Trauma Type,” ibid (emphasis mine).

^[9] “Booming Business for Worsening Mental Health,” Dr. Joseph Mercola, September 7, 2023.

^[10] “Psychotropic Medication Use Before and During COVID-19: A Population-Wide Study,” Christine Leong, Kaarina Kowalec, Sherif Eltonsy, James M. Bolton, et al., Frontiers in Pharmacology, April 27, 2022: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2022.886652/full

^[11] “America’s Epidemic of Antidepressants,” Megan Pagaduan, Berkeley Political Review, November 7, 2021: https://bpr.berkeley.edu/2021/11/07/americas-epidemic-of-antidepressants/

^[12] “Post-COVID Stress Disorder: Another Emerging Consequence of the Global Pandemic,” Psychiatric Times, January 8, 2021; excerpted from “Post-COVID Stress Disorder: Another Emerging Consequence of the Global Pandemic,” Phebe Tucker MD, Department of Psychiatry, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City. Christopher Czapla, MD, assistant professor and residency training director, Department of Psychiatry, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City.

^[13] “…in August 2020 the CDC published results of a large US web-based survey of more than 5000 adults, in which 40.9% endorsed at least 1 adverse mental or behavioral health problem related to the pandemic. Symptoms of a trauma- and stressor-related disorder were reported by 26.3%, symptoms of anxiety or depression by 30.9%, substance use to cope by 13.3%, and serious consideration of suicide in the prior days by 10.7%. Suicidal ideation was significantly higher for younger respondents aged 18 to 24 years (25.5%), minority groups (Hispanic individuals, 18.6%; Black individuals, 15.1%), nonpaid caregivers for adults (30.7%), and essential workers (21.7%).” “Post-COVID Stress Disorder: Another Emerging Consequence of the Global Pandemic,” Psychiatric Times, ibid.

^[14] J.H. Powell, Bring Out Your Dead: The Great Plague of Yellow Fever in Philadelphia in 1793, ibid., Editor’s Preface, p. xv. 

^[15] William H. McNeill, Plagues & Peoples, ibid., pp. 243–44.

^[16] “How Everyone Was Transformed by the Pandemic: Lessons learned and the importance of post-traumatic growth,” Psychology Today, August 19, 2023: https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/psychological-trauma-coping-and-resilience/202308/how-everyone-was-transformed-by-the-pandemic

^[17] “Study identifies ‘post-traumatic growth’ emerging from COVID-19 lockdowns,” University of Bath, February 8, 2021: https://www.bath.ac.uk/announcements/study-identifies-post-traumatic-growth-emerging-from-covid-19-lockdowns/

^[18] https://substack.com/@meredithmiller

^[19] See Meredith Miller, “’Tis the Season for Gaslighting,” Substack, December 22, 2022:

'Tis the Season for Gaslighting

^[20] Dr. Naomi Wolf, “Expressionless Babies, Bored Lovers,” Substack, September 4, 2023:

Expressionless Babies, Bored Lovers

^[21] See Meredith Miller, “Information Control Is Reality Control,” Substack, September 13, 2022:

Information Control Is Reality Control