COVID-19 may increase our risk of depression, anxiety and other mental health concerns, new research suggests. Vaccination appears to reduce the risk of developing these adverse psychiatric side effects, while those who had been hospitalized by the infection saw significantly higher rates of mental illness.
"Awareness of the higher incidence of mental illnesses for up to a year following severe COVID-19 leading to hospitalization may encourage both patients and health professionals to monitor for these conditions, and seek early treatment if appropriate," the study's first author, Venexia Walker, a research fellow in epidemiology at the University of Bristol in the U.K. and the University of Pennsylvania, told Newsweek.
Post-viral symptoms following SARS-CoV-2 infection are not uncommon, with roughly one in 10 of those infected suffering from long-COVID, a study published in the journal Nature Review Microbiology estimated in January 2023. Among the more than 200 symptoms associated with long-COVID, fatigue and brain fog are some of the most widespread, and long-lasting.
However, increasingly, mental-health conditions like depression, anxiety, PTSD, eating disorders, addictions and self-harm are seen to be elevated in the weeks following SARS-CoV-2 infection.
In a new study, published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, Walker and colleagues studied three areas of data, with a total of 18,648,606 participants, to explore these associations. The first group of data was collected between January 2020 and June 2021, before widespread vaccine availability, while the second and third groups were collected between June and December 2021, separated into those who were vaccinated and those who were not.
What the researchers found was that mental illness incidence was elevated for up to a year following severe COVID infection. Walker said that those with a history of mental illness were particularly vulnerable, as were older individuals and men. However, vaccination appeared to mitigate these effects.
"The main benefit of COVID-19 vaccination is that it provides substantial protection against severe COVID-19," Walker said. "Vaccination likely mitigates the adverse effects of COVID-19 on mental health through preventing severe COVID-19 that leads to hospitalization."
As this study was purely associative, it is difficult to pinpoint a specific mechanism for these patterns, and it is too early to say if this correlation is actually indicative of causation. However, Walker said that several potential mechanisms had been suggested.
"Potential mechanisms reported in the literature include physiological pathways, such as inflammation and microvascular changes, and psychosocial effects, such as anxiety about the consequences of COVID-19 including long COVID," she said.
While more work is needed to understand the biochemistry behind these associations, the study has important implications for public health and will hopefully help identify patients who may be at higher risk of these conditions.
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References
Davis, H.E., McCorkell, L., Vogel, J.M. et al. Long COVID: major findings, mechanisms and recommendations. Nat Rev Microbiol 21, 133–146 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41579-022-00846-2
Walker, V. M., Patalay, P., Coronado, J. I. C., Denholm, R., Forbes, H., Stafford, J., Moltrecht, B., Palmer, T., Walker, A., Thompson, E. J., Taylor, K., Cezard, G., Horne, E. M. F., Wei, Y., Al Arab, M., Knight, R., Fisher, L., Massey, J., Davy, S., Mehrkar, A., Bacon, S., Goldacre, B., Wood, A., Chaturvedi, N., Macleod, J., John, A., & Sterne, J. A. C. (2024). COVID-19 and Mental Illnesses in Vaccinated and Unvaccinated People. JAMA Psychiatry. https://doi.org/jamapsychiatry.2024.2339
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