Covid-19 patients at higher risk of experiencing mental health issues, study suggests
- Problems include anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts and sleep disturbances, as well as substance use disorders, according to Washington University team
- Lead researcher says findings suggest increased rates of mental health outcomes, ‘which could have far-reaching consequences’
Those problems include anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts and sleep disturbances, according to the research led by Dr Ziyad Al-Aly, a clinical epidemiologist at the university’s School of Medicine in St Louis.
The study – published in The BMJ on Wednesday – also found an increased risk of substance use disorders including opioids and non-opioids such as alcohol and illicit drugs.
The researchers analysed the anonymous medical records of nearly 154,000 Covid-19 patients who had survived and were in the US Veterans Health Administration system from March 2020 to January 2021.
They then tracked the patients’ medical outcomes from the period after the acute phase of Covid-19 until the end of November 2021, according to the paper.
This health information was compared with that of two control groups: more than 5.6 million patients who did not have Covid-19 during that period; and over 5.8 million people who were patients in 2017, before the pandemic.
None of the study participants had been diagnosed with or treated for a mental health condition in the two years before the start of the follow-up analysis.
Mental health disorders represent one part of the multifaceted nature of long Covid, which can affect nearly every organ system