Is PTSD contagious?
Posted by Emily in 
Photo by Leah Hogsten
By Marti D. Ribeiro
I was friends with a Marine who fought in the battle of Fallujah and who saw the worst that humanity had to offer. He came home a broken man, and within weeks PTSD took over his life. His personality changed and he couldn’t function without alcohol running through his system. It was horrible to watch this decorated Marine melt into a mess of tears and alcohol.
While I always felt his PTSD was “justified” in a way, his wife’s behavior after he returned home always seemed bizarre to me. During his downward spiral into darkness, she fell into a deep depression. She refused to hold a job or do basic things like clean the house or take a shower. While normally a very pretty woman, she quit taking care of both herself and her husband. When talking with her, she’d drone on and on about having “secondary PTSD;” she developed the same symptoms as her husband.
I scoffed at the idea. I was super judgmental and thought that she should be taking care of her husband and the house and doing what she could to help him. Once when hanging out with “the guys,” I even had the audacity to tell the husband that he needed to leave her. I told him that she was making things worse for him, and that he’d be better off without her.
I couldn’t imagine someone who had never gone through things like Fallujah, having the “balls” to say they had PTSD. PTSD is real and should be reserved as a label for those who actually have it, I thought.
But, I now know that I was wrong about the wife’s “secondary PTSD.” Okay, so maybe it’s not actually called “secondary PTSD,” but I’ve seen what she was talking about with my own two eyes. I have PTSD from my lovely trips to places like Afghanistan. I’ve fought against the “disabled veteran” label and have tried to maintain a normal lifestyle-one without alcoholism or suicide ideations. Except for the medication I take every day and the visits to my VA psychiatrists and counselor, I would pride myself on never showing the signs of having PTSD. But, I was wrong. My emotional highs and lows, my anxiety, sleepless nights, night sweats and nightmares take their toll on my spouse. When I’m depressed, it affects him. When I’m anxious, it rubs off on him. My tossing and turning at nights wakes him up, so he has sleepless nights, too. I pick fights when I’m anxious and I’m numb and cold to him when I’m depressed. Silly me…of course my PTSD is going to affect him. Why wouldn’t it?
So, maybe it doesn’t have an official name, but spouses of those suffering with PTSD have to deal with a lot. The depression and anxiety can easily be transferred to the “caregiver” and can cause them to suffer through it as well.
It’s been years since I’ve had any dealings with that couple. I don’t know if they stayed together or went their separate ways. The last I’d heard is that the husband had been shipped off to an inpatient facility to help him heal. I hope that it worked.
To his wife, if you happen to run across this, I’m sorry.
