A new study finds that people who suffer from psychological disorders can be pushed over the edge from "functional" to "total breakdown" by bed bugs. And the parasites can also drive seemingly healthy people into a state of utter despair. According to the study, a 21-year-old woman with no previous history of mental or physical illness "developed bed bug-related anxiety and depression and increased her alcohol consumption." She ultimately wound up in the E.R. after overdosing on over-the-counter pain medication. While it may be tempting to kill yourself, thereby depriving bedbugs of their food supply, suicide is not the answer. That said, some of the cases cited in this study are so harrowing we can understand the urge to swallow a bottle of pills.
Take the 49-year-old woman who was trying to cope with paranoid schizophrenia while living in a housing project. She got the bed bugs and her life went downhill from even that low point: According to the study, “her boyfriend stopped visiting and her church asked her not to return after bedbugs were found in pews." Then she had to be hospitalized because of her mental condition and because she developed anemia "apparently due to blood loss from bed bug bites." While she was hospitalized, workers threw out her belongings and an exterminator got rid of the bed bugs. But according to the study, when she finally was able to come back home, the nightmare started all over again because she brought bed bugs from her mother's apartment! And so she wound up back in the hospital.
You know what else besides bed bugs can mess with your head? Reading studies like this. Take, for instance, the 35-year-old man who was convinced bed bugs were biting him, even though there was no evidence of bites or bed bugs whatsoever. He'd never been treated for a mental illness, but when he finally told doctors his "daily scrubbing with household bleaches was the only reason for [improvement] of his symptoms,” he was diagnosed with a delusional disorder, one he may still have.
See that thin ray of rational light poking through the door crack to your darkened bed bug anxiety closet? Allow Douglas Stern of the Stern Environmental Group to block that out for you. "It's seasonal," Stern tells Crain's. "They'll come out in the warm weather. It's quiet now but everything I hear says this summer's going to be worse than last." Time to stock up on bed bug fart detectors!
