Psychiatrists said on Monday that many coronavirus survivors were more likely to develop mental illnesses, after an extensive study concluded that 20 percent of those infected were diagnosed with a mental disorder within 90 days.
Anxiety, depression and insomnia were more common among recovering Covid-19 patients who had developed psychological problems in the study, and the researchers also found a significantly higher risk of developing dementia.
Paul Harrison, professor of psychiatry at Oxford University in Britain, said, “People were concerned that Covid-19 survivors would become more likely to develop mental health problems, and our results … show that this is likely.”
Harrison said that doctors and scientists around the world urgently need to investigate the causes and identify new treatments for mental illnesses after Covid-19.
“The (health) devices must be ready to provide care, especially since our results are likely to reduce (the number of mentally ill patients),” he added.
The study, published in the Lancet Psychiatry journal, analyzed the electronic health records of 69 million people in the United States, including more than 62,000 cases of Covid-19.
In the three months after testing positive for COVID-19, one in five of those recovering patients for the first time experienced anxiety, depression or insomnia. This is about twice as high, the researchers said, compared to other groups of patients in the same period.
Mental health experts who were not directly involved in the study said that its findings reinforce the growing evidence that Covid-19 can affect the brain and mind, increasing the risk of developing a range of mental illnesses.
Michael Bloomfield, a consultant psychiatrist at University College London, said, “This is likely due to a group of psychological pressures related to this epidemic specifically and to the physical effects of the disease.”
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