Prott was among a half dozen ICU staffers who told Reuters of symptoms such as waking from nightmares bathed in sweat; flashbacks to dying patients during the pandemic’s fear-filled early days; flaring anger; and panic at the sound of medical alarms. Those whose symptoms last longer than one month and are severe enough to interfere with daily life can be diagnosed with PTSD…

“I feel like a schmuck calling it PTSD,” Prott said. “It took me a long time to be able to talk to somebody because I see guys with real PTSD. What I’ve got going on, it’s nothing in comparison, so you feel guilty for thinking that.”

Psychiatrist Dr. Bessel van der Kolk knows better.

“On the surface, a nurse at your local hospital will not look like a guy coming back from Afghanistan,” said the author of “The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.” “But underneath it all, we have these core neurobiology-determined functions that are the same.”