Do you believe that your PTS (PTSD) symptoms can be found in your family members? It is called secondary PTS.

All I can say is don't be afraid to seek help. Help is available.

Individuals can get what is known as secondary PTSD. This is sometimes found in healthcare workers and care givers who often listen to primary PTSD patients talking about their trauma.

I think depression is contagious in general. If you are down, it will effect others around you in most cases. I don't think PTSD is contagious, but it will still affect how others react when around someone with PTSD. It could be a cause of someone else becoming stressed, but not necessarily PTS.

I have PTSD or PTS which ever you like to call it. I would say that in some cases it is contagious to people or family around you. I have found some people around me have been just fine but on the hand I have found that it is the opposite and seems catch some. Nightmares for example seems I have pasted a couple onto my better half. They aren't military related but before hand she really didn't have them at all and she is a RN. I belive that it could be passed to other depending on the state of the other person and what they may have been through or maybe how tough there defenses are.

Contagious, no, better diagnosed yes. Additionally, the greater awareness of the injury has allowed many to seek help where they would not have in the past. How many of our past veterans had the same injury and just lived with it or self-medicated? No one would expect a soldier to not seek aid for gunshot wound, shrapnel, or fractured limb but for some reason we still have people thinking they need to suck it up and soldier on with these types of injuries?

Can you imagine anyone allowing a soldier to ignore any other type of injury? “No Specialist, you don’t need to seek medical attention for that gash across your chest, just try to make sure you don’t drip blood all over?” “Sergeant you can keep limping on that fractured leg, your good right?”

I don't think it's contagious as in the medical definition of the term, however I think what you are describing is the effect that PTSD and other conditions have on our loved ones. It is not only our service time away from family that they have to deal with, it is also the soldier that returns home and may bring with them some issues that the family has to deal with forever. I applaud you for seeking assistance from the VA and also for sharing that with other vets. We need to support each other and show others the path to help when they are in need.

I don't think it is contagious but that said my wife has gone through a lot for and with me. I literally would not be alive if it wasn't for her love and compassion. It has had effects on everyone close to me since Afghanistan My eldest daughter had it pretty bad. I am so grateful for the good people in my life that have helped me to where I am now and it is a day to day struggle for a lot of reasons

I don't know if it is contagious exactly, but I do know that it is struggle for everyone involved. I have a loved one dealing with it and though he's gotten much better over this past year, we have had some very trying times together to get him through it and some days it affects me more than it does him and as hard as it is, you have to realize that it will get better over time. I'm extremely thankful to those that have been helping my fiance with his PTSD because they have done so much for him and it makes me happy to see that people have a genuine concern for the well being of others even if they are not from the same unit or do not even know each other.

SFC Mark Merino, this is an excellent point! I never considered what you describe, that PTS might be "contagious," but now that you say it, I can see that it definitely could be.

I didn't get PTSD from any deployment (my one six-month deployment was relatively stress free; a UN mission in Zagreb with fighting, but we weren't fighting, we were peacekeeping), but I did grow up in a home where my father demanded certain things (quiet was one ... we literally tip-toed around the house). I "caught" that, and I've seen myself demanding quiet of my family members.

So, it's kind of a generational phenomenon for me. Not "typical" PTSD in the deployment/combat sense, but still.

Let me try to share something here that may or may not apply.
Back in the early 70s I knew something was wrong, just didn't know quite what. The VA considered it a Nervous disorder (my claim which was denied) at the time and their help was worse than no help at all, almost leading to my death. I spent some time as an out patient and also went to the out reach vet centers that were brand new. I fled the VA for a number of scary reasons and eventually had to get away from the Vet Center also.

The early Vet Centers were run by poorly trained civilian case workers that were usually pissing themselves from the stories they heard and the daily activities going on (suicide by Cop, drug and alcohol use, armed vets, domestic problems)

At the time I went because I thought that I could help others , because the "helpers" were so inept. I myself was probably full tilt crazy at the time but didn't recognize it. I went to many group meetings and despite the fact that almost all of my time in RVN was in the field in combat, met a lot of guys with absolutely horrifying experiences (regaining consciousness stacked in the middle of a boat load of the dead)

I did my best to help the staff and the Vets see some of the problems that the vets were hiding from themselves, but it all became too much and my problems, due to being able to empathize with theirs became worse. I lived near by and when the Center closed for the night they would dump all of these still cranked up vets out on the street. I took them all home to have a beer and decompress a bit.

I had to get away from all of that for the sake of my own sanity and eventually found a good psychologist, and on my own Nickel, worked it out on my own. It was decades before the VA offered me any real help and that came about by my old Tank crewmen badgering me to get back to the VA. The difference then and now is like night and day. If you even think you need help, go get it. They have learned a lot from us RVN vets. If you need to talk, message me, or another old vet, we really have been there and know what it's like.