The Impact of a Life-Changing Medical Event on Mental Health

After a life-changing medical event, you can feel physically and mentally displaced. Perhaps you’ve experienced rounds of experimental drug treatments, been put under for surgeries that left you with sutures and scars, or bounced between hospital beds to your bedroom and back again. And what happens when it’s over? What happens when pain remains, or the traumatic memory of the event carries wounds of its own?

The importance of getting medical care often supersedes the importance of our emotional well-being. When we’re in survival mode, we’re just trying to make it through another day. But the end of treatment and the end of the experience are not always the same thing.

Research has shown that post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is common among survivors of life-threatening medical events, even after the physical danger has passed. Therapy for chronic illness and medical trauma provides a space to tend to that part of the experience, to begin stitching together the wounds that remain open.

This work is meaningful to me because I also experienced the aftermath of having my life interrupted and changed. Although the immediate danger had passed, on the surface I appeared young and healthy. Internally, it was almost as if I were still in the operating room.

That disconnect between physical recovery and psychological recovery can be difficult to understand, especially when the world around you expects life to return to normal. But what if “normal” now means something different?