Coronavirus: experts warn of a hidden crisis due long Covid’s link to suicide

Analysis by health data firm Truveta showed patients with long Covid were nearly twice as likely to receive a first-time antidepressant prescription

There is some evidence that Covid can cause brain inflammation – which has been linked to suicide and depression

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Professional psychiatrist talking to female patient about mental health. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 9:00pm, 8 Sep 2022Updated: 11:33pm, 13 Dec 2023

Scott Taylor never got to move on from Covid-19.

The 56-year-old, who caught the disease in spring 2020, still had not recovered about 18 months later when he killed himself at his home near Dallas, having lost his health, memory and money.

“No one cares. No one wants to take the time to listen,” Taylor wrote in a final text to a friend, speaking of the plight of millions of sufferers of long Covid, a disabling condition that can last for months and years after the initial infection.

“I can hardly do laundry without complete exhaustion, pain, fatigue, pain all up and down my spine. World spinning dizzily, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea. It seems I say stuff and have no idea of what I’m saying,” Taylor added.

Long Covid is a complex medical condition that can be hard to diagnose as it has a range of more than 200 symptoms – some of which can resemble other illnesses – from exhaustion and cognitive impairment to pain, fever and heart palpitations, according to the World Health Organization.

There is no authoritative data on the frequency of suicides among sufferers. Several scientists from organisations including the US National Institutes of Health and Britain’s data-collection agency are beginning to study a potential link following evidence of increased cases of depression and suicidal thoughts among people with long Covid, as well as a growing number of known deaths.