Coping with PTSD through bees

Veterans cope with PTSD through beekeeping

By Michael Boyer, Mackenzie Elliott, Sam Mosher and Trevor Rowland

John Williams tends to his beehive at Jefferson Farm and Garden in Columbia, Missouri, on Tuesday, April 24, 2018. Williams learned about beekeeping as a child from his grandfather. After seven deployments in various parts of the world including Iraq and the Balkans with the U.S. Army, Williams returned home to Columbia in 2011. He started beekeeping to help with his post-traumatic stress disorder.

A honeybee rests on a pile of discarded wax from the beehive Williams tends to at Jefferson Farm and Garden in Columbia, Missouri, on Tuesday, April 24, 2018. Williams enjoys sharing his wealth of knowledge of beekeeping with others. “I don’t have to be messing with bees if someone asks me questions about it. I just get happy because I can actually change somebody’s mind about it,” Williams said.

Williams inspects one of his beehives for invasive insects and other potential issues at Jefferson Farm and Garden in Columbia, Missouri, on Tuesday, April 24, 2018. While some can be intimidated by the immense number of bees, Williams is unperturbed, often tending to his bees without a protective suit. “It’s a great way of overcoming your fears because you’re holding life and death in your hands with that … It’s an adrenaline high,” Williams said.

Honeybees crawl on top of the slides of Williams’ hive at Jefferson Farm and Garden in Columbia, Missouri, on Tuesday, April 24, 2018. Williams also has 10 more hives at his home. “If you get 5,000 plus bees in one area … and everybody is beating at the same time, it’s soothing. It’s like sitting by an ocean,” said Williams. “You can close your eyes and listen to every bee.”

Veterans practice mindfulness with beekeeping to treat PTSD

Capt. James McCormick served 22 years in the U.S. Army, taking part in Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom. But when he retired in 2009 in his home state of West Virginia, he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

“I was worried, depressed, mad, angry, wanted to kill something, destroy something,” he said.

Two years later, he found beekeeping, and the activity helped him cope with his PTSD.

“Being able to sit down and shut up the noise for a while, that's what beekeeping does for you,” he said. “It really helps you to overcome those anxieties and fears.”

It may sound strange, but many veterans find beekeeping therapeutic. The activity can help treat PTSD symptoms like stress and social anxiety, according to therapist and social worker Jennie Bedsworth. Veterans say they find beekeeping therapeutic due to its sounds, the focus it requires, overcoming the fear of working with bees and the satisfaction of building a successful hive.

Bedsworth said she is not surprised by the effect of beekeeping on people with PTSD. She said beekeeping is similar to exercises she uses to calm the minds of patients. These are known as mindfulness exercises.

“A lot of therapists will use mindfulness and incorporate that at the beginning of therapy to get that stress response calmed down, and I can see that very much connecting to the beekeeping,” she said. “People will use it to clear their mind and be one in the moment.”

Beekeeping relates to more PTSD symptoms than just stress. It can help veterans regain control of their fears, according to Bedsworth.

Lasting trauma

Bedsworth described PTSD as “getting stuck in the experience of a trauma.”

PTSD researcher Rishi Sharma said this feeling of being “stuck” is caused by the pervasiveness of the trauma.

“PTSD patients are not able to undo their fearful memories so they double up fearful memories, and it's hard to erase them over time,” he said.

The majority of people, or about 60 percent of men and 50 percent of women, experience at least one instance of trauma in their lives, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. Only 7 to 8 percent of the general population develops PTSD, according to the VA.

But this percentage is much higher for veterans to develop PTSD. About 30 percent of Vietnam veterans have PTSD in their lifetime, and about 11 to 20 percent of veterans from Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom have PTSD in a year, according to the VA.

PTSD affects the brain’s prefrontal cortex and amygdala, which are partly responsible for decision-making and stress response. Symptoms include depression, nightmares, hyperarousal and intrusive memories of the trauma. Bedsworth said these symptoms can amount to a feeling of being “in danger all the time.”

Intrusive memories are caused by triggers that remind people with PTSD of their trauma. Common triggers for veterans with PTSD are loud noises, children crying and scents like diesel fuel, according to PTSD counselor Ric Doubet. He said PTSD symptoms’ most “debilitating” symptom is the “feeling of being out of control.”

Without proper treatment, people with PTSD can turn to substance abuse or suicide. The risk of suicide rate for veterans is 22 percent greater than non-veterans, according to the VA. In 2016, there were 20 veteran suicides a day.

Bedsworth said veterans with PTSD are more likely to commit suicide because of the violent nature of their trauma.

“[Veterans] are more habituated or used to the violence and used to death, so it's not as frightening to commit suicide as it would be for someone who hadn't been exposed to death through dying or seeing people die,” she said.

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Hive state of mind

Today, McCormick doesn’t take medicine for PTSD, which he partly credits to beekeeping. He is the director of the Veterans and Warriors to Agriculture program in West Virginia. He helped start the program in 2014 so other veterans could learn the therapeutic nature of beekeeping.

“I've seen people who came to us that literally had already attempted suicide once, twice, one guy three times,” he said. “[They] come into this program and they come up to you and say, ‘I wish I would have found this before I did [that].’”

McCormick said beekeeping is therapeutic to him and other veterans because they are overcoming a fear of working with bees.

“The first time I got involved with it, I overcame the fear of actually standing around a bunch of buzzing bees and not wanting to swat them,” he said. “It was immediate.”

Bedsworth said overcoming fear is an important part of treating PTSD.

“Anytime you're going and facing a fear in something that seems out of your control and you're getting that control back, then you would be healing that part of yourself that felt like it had lost control in the world,” she said.

McCormick said the sound of bees is “calming.” Sharma said similar mindfulness exercises can help improve sleep problems associated with PTSD.

“One thing we need is to relax their hyperaroused mind and let them have good sleep,” he said. “This is what I think is a prime, important feature of treating or having a good treatment strategy for PTSD patients.”

Mark Gifford, who retired from the Army after 24 years of service, said beekeeping gives him a sense of purpose.

“If you harvest honey off of the hive, you have a tangible outcome … You can say, ‘I've got something done today,’” he said. “Because there were a lot of days where … I would lay down at night and it's like, ‘I didn't get a damn thing done today. What have I done that's productive?’ Whereas now, it's not that way.”

Michael Simone-Finstrom, a research molecular biologist who has taught beekeeping to veterans, said a goal of his programs is to get veterans working with their hands.

“It can actually be a productive use of time and a way to kind of help in the healing process,” he said.

McCormick said he hopes to see beekeeping programs spread everywhere in the United States.

“I believe honestly that we would see a reduction in suicide, a reduction in medication, a reduction in trips to and from the hospital,” he said.

McCormick said he does his part in this mission by hosting annual classes for veterans and their families. He said about 150 people attend and families travel to West Virginia from as far as Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia for the classes.