The Center for Evidence-Based Medicine (CEBM) published a paper confirming a link between severe mental illness and COVID. In headline terms, this says:
1… There is limited evidence suggesting people with severe mental illness may be experiencing greater psychological distress during the COVID-19 pandemic. Than the wider public do.
2… Public health measures associated with COVID-19 … may negatively affect the mental health status of people with severe mental illness. That’s through change of environment, disruption of services, increased stress, and isolation.
3… There are theoretical reasons to suspect people with severe mental illness may be at increased risk of contracting SARS-C0V-2. And moreover could have worse outcomes following infection, although there is no existing data quantifying these risks.
One in Five People with COVID Develop Psychiatric Disorders
The researchers gathered from University of Oxford, and NIHR Oxford Health Biomedical Research Center. They explored the link between severe mental illness and COVID further, and then found something they did not expect. Nearly one in five people who experienced Covid-19 diagnosed with psychiatric disorders within three months of testing positive. And those conditions included anxiety, depression, and also insomnia.
The Link Between Severe Mental Illness and COVID Needs Investigation
Dr. Max Taquet, NIHR academic clinical fellow believes psychiatric disorders should be added to the list of risk factors. That’s because the study examined the U.S. health records of roughly seventy million COVID-19 cases and is therefore far reaching.
The researchers found 5.8% of patients had their first recorded diagnosis of psychiatric illness after catching the disease. Moreover, this was almost double the risk of developing influenza, other respiratory tract infections, and skin infection. As well as gallstones, urinary tract stones, fracture of a large bone, and other control conditions.
But the data unfortunately did not include socio-economic background, smoking, use of drugs, and other contributing factors. None the less Paul Harrison, professor of psychiatry at the University of Oxford is persuaded. ‘It’s not at all implausible that Covid-19 might have some direct effect on your brain, and your mental health’, he believes.
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Preview Image: Lonely Isolation & Infection Control
