Bed Bugs – It’s Not Just The Bites.

October 28, 2014 – Anyone who has ever been bitten by bed bugs while they slept knows that it can feel like the nightmare keeps going even when they wake up.  Not only is that person aware that tiny bugs were crawling over their body, biting their skin, sucking their blood, and excreting old blood onto their skin while they slept, but the victim often constantly worries about it happening the next night. And the next night. And the next night.

Sleep deprivation, anxiety, emotional distress, imagining things crawling from the corner of your eyes, poor performance at work, arguing with a significant other, and heightened stress are all side effects that can arise from being bitten by bed bugs.  A recently published article by Rose Eveleth in The Atlantic does an excellent job of discussing a recent study that indicates the mental effects of a bed bug infestation as a stressor are significant.  Click here to read the article.

Of course, that study confirms what many of our clients have been telling us for years – the anxiety and emotional distress from bed bugs is debilitating.  More than one client has explained to us through tears about her feelings of helplessness when her young child or infant would constantly wake up with fresh bite marks on their skin, not knowing that the apartment they had just moved into was infested with bed bugs.  Another client was constantly scared that the Department of Child Services would take her children away because she was a bad mother, due to the horrifying rash on her children’s skin from an entrenched infestation of bed bugs that the landlord did not disclose to her before she signed the lease.

Fortunately, we have found that our clients who suffer from emotional distress arising from bed bugs have often benefited by seeking counseling from licensed mental health professionals.