COVID-19 Survivors More Likely to Have Mental Stresses

Many persons who are COVID-19 survivors have experiences of various other mental health challenges like anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, usage of drugs and alcohols, and sleep disturbances, said by the researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System.

In a large, comprehensive study of the psychological effects of COVID-19 infection, researchers found that such disorders occur within one year of recovery from the virus in those with severe and mild infections. This research was published by the journal British Medical Journal.

‘Researchers found that such disorders occur within one year of recovery from the virus in those with severe and mild infections.’

"We know from previous studies and personal experiences that the immense challenges of the past two years of the pandemic have had a profound effect on our collective mental health," told Senior Author Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University.

"But while we've all suffered during the pandemic, people who have had COVID-19 fare far worse mentally. We need to acknowledge this reality and address these conditions now before they balloon into a much larger mental health crisis."

When the pandemic started more than 403 million people were affected globally and in the United States 77 million were affected.

"To put this in perspective, COVID-19 infections likely have contributed to more than 14.8 million new cases of mental health disorders worldwide and 2.8 million in the U.S.," he said, referring to data from the study.

"Our calculations do not account for the untold number of people, likely in the millions, who suffer in silence due to mental health stigma or a lack of resources or support. Further, we expect the problem to grow because cases seem to be increasing over time. Frankly, the scope of this mental health crisis is jarring, frightful and sad."

"Our goal was to provide a comprehensive analysis that will help improve our understanding of the long-term risk of mental health disorders in people with COVID-19 and guide their post-infection health care," he added. "To date, studies on COVID-19 and mental health have been limited by a maximum of six months of follow-up data and by a narrow selection of mental health outcomes - for example, examining depression and anxiety but not substance use disorders."

The researchers examined unidentified medical records in a database maintained by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the nation's largest integrated health care distribution system.

Researchers have compiled a controlled dataset of 153,848 adults tested COVID-19-positive sometime from March 1, 2020, to January 12, 2021, and survived the first 30 days of the disease. Some were vaccinated in the study prior to the development of COVID-19 because vaccines were not yet widely available at the time of registration.

Statistical modeling was used to compare the psychological effects in the COVID-19 database with those of the other two non-viral groups. Control group of more than 5.6 million patients simultaneously without COVID-19; before the onset of the epidemic, the control group had a population of more than 5.8 million who were sick from March 2018 to January 2019.

Most of the participants in the study were elderly white men. However, due to its large size, this study has a large population of over 1.3 million women, over 2.1 million Black participants, and large numbers of people from all ages.

People with COVID-19 are 35% more likely to suffer from anxiety disorders and 40% more likely to experience depression- or stress-related disorders that can affect behavior and emotions, compared to those in non-infectious control groups. This coincided with a 55% increase in the use of antidepressants and a 65% increase in the use of benzodiazepines to treat anxiety.

Similarly, COVID-19 survivors are 41% more likely to develop sleep disorders and 80% more likely to experience neurological cognitive decline. The latter refers to amnesia, confusion, inattention, and other impairments commonly known as brain fog.

Those people with COVID-19 are 34% more likely to develop opioid use disorders and 20% more likely to develop nonoboid substance use disorders involving alcohol or illicit drugs compared to those without COVID-19. Suicide thoughts are 46% higher for them.

"People need to know that if they have had COVID-19 and are struggling mentally, they're not alone, and they should seek help immediately and without shame," he said. "It's critical that we recognize this now, diagnose it and address it before the opioid crisis snowballs and we start losing more people to suicide.

"There needs to be greater recognition of these issues by governments, public and private health insurance providers, and health systems to ensure that we offer people equitable access to resources for diagnosis and treatment," he added.

To better understand whether the higher risk of mental disorders is specific to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the researchers compared COVID-19 patients with 72,207 flu patients, of whom 11,924 were hospitalized between October 2017 and February 2020. Again, the risk was significantly higher - 27% and 45% - in those with moderate and severe COVID-19 infections, respectively.

"My hope is that this dispels the notion that COVID-19 is like the flu," he said. "It's so much more serious."

Because hospital stays can trigger anxiety, depression, and other mental conditions, the researchers compared those admitted to the hospital for COVID-19 within the first 30 days of infection with those admitted to the hospital for any other reason. Mental disorders account for 86% of all hospital admissions for COVID-19.

"Our findings suggest a specific link between SARS-CoV-2 and mental health disorders," Al-Aly continued. "We're not certain why this is, but one of the leading hypotheses is that the virus can enter the brain and disturb cellular and neuron pathways, leading to mental health disorders."

"What I'm absolutely certain about is that urgent attention is needed to identify and treat COVID-19 survivors with mental health disorders," he said finally.

Overall, this study found that people who were COVID-19 survivors were 60% more likely to have mental health problems than non-sufferers. This study leads to an increase in the use of drugs prescribed to treat such problems and to an increased risk of substance use disorders, including opioids and nonbiotics such as alcohol and illicit drugs.

Source: Medindia