Divers with PTSD, disabilities discover the therapeutic power of scuba diving
Tracy Schmitt spent years trying to find a scuba instructor. She is a competitive sailor, skier and mountaineer, but each dive shop she approached refused to entertain the idea that she could be a capable student.
“I had all of these conversations trying to be persuasive,” Schmitt says. “Not even to get accepted but just to – pardon the expression – get a foot in the door.”
Schmitt was born a quadruple amputee. Her disability eclipsed her many achievements, such as captaining 110foot ships in the eastern Atlantic, and the instructors assumed teaching her to dive would be impossible.
“They couldn’t imagine: no legs and no left arm, and my right arm is unique with one finger – how would I do it?” Schmitt says. “Fast forward, today I’m an advanced scuba diver approaching my one-hundredth dive.” She just got back from a trip to Egypt, where she dove in the Red Sea.
For people who are not living with a disability, learning to scuba dive is as simple as going to the right place with the right amount of money. The activity – or sport, hobby or lifestyle, depending on who you talk to – inspires divers to travel the world in pursuit of premier dive sites.
But as Schmitt experienced, not every dive shop has the training, equipment or initiative to welcome every student. That’s something advocates are working to change as more people discover scuba and its therapeutic benefits.
Cody Unser grew up in a family of scuba divers, but she got sick before she was old enough to join them in the water. At 12 years old, Unser developed transverse myelitis (TM), a rare autoimmune condition that left her paralyzed from the waist down.
As she was adjusting to her “new nightmare,” Unser struggled with depression. “I didn’t think anything was possible,” Unser says. “I would stab my legs with pens. I would throw myself on the floor from the bed. All of us with disabilities have dark days.”
Her brother Al was worried that his sister was withering away. He taught Unser to do wheelies in her chair – and incensed staff at her rehabilitation center by challenging his sister to wheelchair races. Eventually, he convinced her to try scuba diving.
Between putting on a wet suit, learning techniques and handling equipment, diving was a lot for Unser to take in. But unlike the other difficult skills she had to learn following her paralysis, the basics of diving were fun. And when she went underwater, it became more than fun.
“The whole world goes silent and your worries just drift away,” she says. “It was the first time I felt like myself again.”
The learning process of scuba is divided in three parts. There is the academic portion in which students take scuba diving 101 online or in a classroom. The second step takes place in a confined water setting where an instructor walks students through essential skill development. The third continues that training in an open body of water, such as an ocean, lake or quarry.
For scuba students with disabilities, there can be additional challenges to training. Fortunately, there is no exact way to dive, and the industry encourages adjusting techniques to make the sport more accessible. As long as students can demonstrate they can perform specific skills – such as entering the water safely or communicating underwater – they can scuba.
“How you achieve the performance objectives is not the point. The point is that you indeed achieve them,” says Kristin Valette-Wirth, a spokesperson for the Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) Worldwide.
In 2018, PADI launched an Adaptive Techniques Course that teaches how to modify equipment configurations and develop a diver’s skills based on their needs.
For example, Unser and her instructor found ways to adapt part of the certification process – the fin pivot – by using webbed gloves in lieu of fins. Some divers adjust how they enter the water for a dive, using a modified roll instead of a default giant-stride.
Schmitt has worked with her longtime instructor, Hubert Chrétien, founder of Freedom at Depth Canada, to find adaptations that work for her. They have customized gear over the years, such as designing wet suits tailored for her body, finding a spatula device that helps her pinch her nose to equalize air pressure while diving, and strapping on shin fins to help her swim through stronger currents.
With the right adjustments, the end result is a better dive experience for Schmitt. “I’m eternally happy,” she says. “I’m fully present and fully absorbed once I’m underwater and descended. It’s magical.”
Silence is part of what makes scuba such a powerful therapy for people with disabilities and those with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
“If someone is experiencing a lot of trauma, their brain is constantly hypervigilant,” says Christine Norton, a certified clinical trauma professional and certified clinical adventure therapist. “So if you’re underwater, you’re able to calm some of that and focus.”
Norton also says the demands of monitoring your equipment, communicating with your diving partners and exercising your technique keeps your brain engaged in a constructive way.
Unser hopes research documenting scuba’s health benefits will help legitimize the activity beyond hobby status. That distinction is crucial for nonprofits such as hers that need help raising money for training, trips and equipment.
“Funding has been always a challenging issue,” Unser says. “When we apply for grants, they don’t recognize scuba diving is something that is therapeutic for somebody with a disability. They just chalk it up as a recreational sport.”