Facing major life stressors heavily predicted whether someone developed the symptoms of long COVID at higher odds than age, sex, and severity of the COVID infection, like whether or not they needed a ventilator, new research found. Over 50% of those studied 12 months after COVID infection dealt with a severe life stressor, and half experienced post COVID symptoms, the most common being headache, cognitive impairment, anxiety, depression, sleep disturbances, and fatigue. Factoring in someone’s life experiences—including the stressful life events—of long COVID patients can add clarity to the patient’s symptoms, and potentially lead to a more holistic understanding of the often debilitating post-viral experience many endure, Dr. Jennifer Frontera, an author of the study and professor in the department of neurology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, tells Fortune.
Researchers discovered that a variety of life stressors, including death of a loved one, food insecurity, financial insecurity, a new disability, relationship problems and political conflict with a close contact, helped predict someone’s fatigue, anxiety, depression, sleep, and post COVID-related symptoms about a year after the initial infection. Exposure to at least one of the 13 stressors the researchers analyzed increased the odds of having post COVID symptoms 12 months out by over two-fold. The odds of having severe fatigue, sleep, depression, anxiety and post COVID symptoms when dealing with financial insecurity, death of a loved one, food insecurity, and a new disability ranged from 2.5 to 20.8. The most common predictors of fatigue, anxiety, depression and post COVID symptoms were food insecurity, death of a loved one and a new disability. Frontera describes these stressors as bidirectional. It could be that a life stressor is impacting your mental health, and therefore fatigue and long COVID symptoms, or that your long COVID symptoms are influencing a life stressor.
