COVID Patients May Have Increased Risk of Developing Mental Health Problems--study

Social isolation, economic stress, loss of loved ones and other struggles during the pandemic have contributed to rising mental health issues like anxiety and depression.

But can having COVID-19 increase the risk of developing mental health problems? A large new study suggests it can.

The study, published Wednesday in the journal The BMJ, analyzed records of nearly 154,000 COVID patients in the Veterans Health Administration system and compared their experience in the year after they recovered from their initial infection with that of a similar group of people who did not contract the virus.

The study included only patients who had no mental health diagnoses or treatment for at least two years before becoming infected with the coronavirus, allowing researchers to focus on psychiatric diagnoses and treatment that occurred after coronavirus infection.

People who had COVID were 39% more likely to be diagnosed with depression and 35% more likely to be diagnosed with anxiety over the months following infection than people without COVID during the same period, the study found. COVID patients were 38% more likely to be diagnosed with stress and adjustment disorders and 41% more likely to be diagnosed with sleep disorders than uninfected people.

“There appears to be a clear excess of mental health diagnoses in the months after COVID,” said Paul Harrison, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Oxford, who was not involved in the study. He said the results echoed the emerging picture from other research, including a 2021 study on which he was an author, and “it strengthens the case that there is something about COVID that is leaving people at greater risk of common mental health conditions.”

The data does not suggest that most COVID patients will develop mental health symptoms. Only between 4.4% and 5.6% of those in the study received diagnoses of depression, anxiety or stress and adjustment disorders.