During the last decade, the field of critical care medicine has been undergoing a sea change, says Dale Needham, medical director of the Johns Hopkins Critical Care Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Program. It wasn't enough for a patient to leave the ICU alive, the longtime benchmark for success. Rather, he explains, doctors began devoting more attention to patients’ long-term recovery while still in the ICU, offering physical and occupational therapy in addition to lifesaving care.

Other recent work by Needham and his colleagues shows that about two-thirds of patients who survive acute respiratory distress syndrome, a prototypical ailment in the ICU, have symptoms of depression, anxiety and PTSD afterward. About a third of these have symptoms of all three.

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