Study finds COVID survivors are at higher risk of mental health disorders

The onset of the pandemic last year left us in confined spaces and self-isolation. It gave us the time needed to slow down and introspect. But, it was highly delicate for people suffering from mental health problems. A recent study conducted by the University of Oxford estimated that one in three Covid-19 survivors suffered from a  neurological or psychiatric condition within the six months of being infected. 

The data that the researchers examined was collected from TriNetX electronic 2020 health records. The sample size was 2,30,000 Covid-19 patients, most of them belonging to the US. The findings of the study concluded that the risk of developing a mental or neurological problem increased with the severity of the COVID-19 infections. 

The study published in The Lancet Psychiatry journal found that 34 per cent (one in three) were diagnosed with mental health problems within six months of being infected. The study was comparative with the patients who suffered from other respiratory diseases such as flu or pneumonia. The outcome was that 44 per cent were more plausible of suffering from mental and neurological problems after Covid-19 than after flu; 16 per cent were more plausible after Covid-19 than with other respiratory infections such as pneumonia.

The diagnosis of the Covid-19 patients revealed that 17 per cent were suffering from an anxiety disorder, 14 per cent mood disorder, 7 per cent substance misuse disorders, and 5 per cent with insomnia. The neurological disorders probability turned out to be lower than that of mental health problems with 0.6 per cent with brain haemorrhage , 2.1 per cent for an ischemic attack, and 0.7 percent for dementia.

The study’s lead author Paul Harrison, professor of psychiatry at the University of Oxford, said: “Although the individual risks for most disorders are small, the effect across the whole population may be substantial for health and social care systems due to the scale of the pandemic and that many of these conditions are chronic.

“As a result, healthcare systems need to be resourced to deal with the anticipated need, both within primary and secondary care services.”

Dr Max Taquet one of the co-authors of the study, mentioned another grave finding that one in 50 patients (2.1 percent) suffered from ischaemic attack(where a blood clot affects the brain) within six months and one in 11 patients (9 percent) with encephalopathy.

The authors of the research are in the view that the causes of the mental and neurological illness are not directly linked to the Covid-19 infection but the subsequent result of the psychological stress that comes with the illness. 

The study’s limitation is that the research was done with the data collected from electronic health records, with no confirmatory accuracy of the data and the completeness of it. Also, there is no gauge of the severity of the mental and neurological illness and a track of what happened to them after six months.

Professor Paul Crawford, director of the Nottingham University’s Institute of Mental Health, said there was a need to determine whether the mental health problems detected in the study were the result of Covid infection or “of prolonged confinement and isolation... endured during the pandemic”.