As the world battles with the aftermath of Covid-19 pandemic, a new study reveals that Covid-19 infection may be the reason for an increased risk of mental health disorders, including anxiety, depression, substance use, and sleep disorders among its survivor up to one year after the viral infection.
The study which revealed alarming details suggests that tackling mental health disorders among survivors of Covid-19 should be considered a priority.
"In our recent study, published in The BMJ, we perform a comprehensive in-depth evaluation of the risks of mental health disorders in people with covid-19 at one year. The results show that even when compared to contemporaneous controls of people who did not have covid-19, but were exposed to the same adverse forces of the pandemic—including economic, social, and other stressors—those with covid-19 exhibited increased risk of mental health outcomes. This was consistent in analyses versus a historical control group from a pre-pandemic era," it said.
It is important to note that more than 403 million people globally and 77 million in the US have been infected with the virus since the pandemic started.
"To put this in perspective, Covid-19 infections likely have contributed to more than 14.8 million new cases of mental health disorders worldwide and 2.8 million in the U.S," said senior author of the study Ziyad Al-Aly, referring to data from the study.
"Our calculations do not account for the untold number of people, likely in the millions, who suffer in silence due to mental health stigma or a lack of resources or support," Al-Aly, a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University, said.
The study further noted that, "mental health disorders represent one part of the multifaceted nature of long covid which can affect nearly every organ system (including the brain, heart, and kidneys). Our results should be used to promote awareness of this risk among people with covid-19 and to guide efforts for the early identification and treatment of affected individuals."
The researchers used data from the US Department of Veterans Affairs national healthcare databases to estimate the risks of mental health outcomes in people who survived at least 30 days after a positive PCR test result between March 2020 and January 2021.
They compared mental health outcomes in the Covid-19 dataset with two other groups of people not infected with the virus: a control group of more than 5.6 million patients who did not have Covid-19 during the same time frame; and a control group of over 5.8 million patients from March 2018 through January 2019, well before the pandemic began.
The majority of study participants were older white males. However, because of its large size, the study included more than 1.3 million females, more than 2.1 million Black participants, and large numbers of people of various ages.
The Covid-19 group was further divided into those who were or were not admitted to hospital during the acute phase of infection. Information was also collected on potentially influential factors including age, race, sex, lifestyle, and medical history.
The researchers then followed all three groups for one year to estimate the risks of prespecified mental health outcomes, including anxiety, depression and stress disorders, substance use disorders, neurocognitive decline, and sleep disorders. Compared with the non-infected control group, people with Covid-19 showed a 60% higher risk of any mental health diagnosis or prescription at one year.
When the researchers examined mental health disorders separately, they found that Covid-19 was associated with an additional 24 per 1,000 people with sleep disorders at one year, 15 per 1,000 with depressive disorders, 11 per 1,000 with neurocognitive decline, and 4 per 1,000 with any substance use disorders.
Similar results were found when the Covid-19 group was compared with the historical control group. The risks were highest in people admitted to hospital during the initial phase of Covid-19, but were evident even among those who were not admitted to hospital.
