Dissecting PTSD - as cases predicted to soar

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PTSD diagnosis is expected to rise sharply in the wake of the coronavirus crisis.

Experts are warning that tens of thousands of COVID-19 survivors were seriously ill enough to now be at risk of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Sussex Newspapers group arts editor Phil Hewitt is four years down the road with PTSD.

Here he shares a new video interview – with US running community Still I Run – about the way he has coped, the thinking he has tried to employ to counter what happened.

You can view the interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI42PVq39lQPlease note: the video contains graphic descriptions of violence.

Phil was stabbed in a vicious street mugging in Cape Town – and abandoned in a pool of blood in a grim desolate suburb.

He used running to get back to health – a story he tells in his book Outrunning The Demons, available from Amazon here.

“The title says it all, but the point is that you can outrun your demons, you can outsing them, you can outpaint them, you can outknit them…. You have just got to find the thing that gets you back to being you. As I discuss in the interview, it’s all about finding the something that will restore and heal you.

“It is hard. Really really hard. There are good days – and there are bad days. My favourite description of PTSD is that it is the ‘world’s worst flat mate’. That sums it up perfectly. I hope this video of my own experiences will help others just waking up to the condition now – for vastly different reasons than my own.”

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