The research was conducted on 69 million individuals out of which 62,354 were covid positives and amongst those suffering from mental illness like depression, anxiety and dementia were mostly of, or above aged 65.
Paul Harrison, Psychiatry Professor at Oxford said “People have been worried that COVID-19 survivors will be at greater risk of mental health problems, and our findings show this to be likely.”
He also stated that there is an urgent need to investigate the causes behind and identify treatments for mental illness after COVID-19.
The study found that anxiety disorders, adjustment disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and to a lesser extent, post-traumatic stress disorder and panic disorder were the most frequent. The study also finds that people with pre-existing mental illness were 65% more likely to be diagnosed with COVID-19 than those without it.
After the effort of oxford university, the UK based CoroNerve has started to collect data with the help of various clinical reports to find out the neurological disorders in covid patients to eventually come out with a much larger database on the issue.
According to a study published in October in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), autopsies of deceased covid-19 patients show evidence of inflammation in the brain. Neuroimaging studies have detected a neurological disorder called leukoencephalopathy and micro bleed in critical patients.
A study on 99 patients in China after the first wave showed that around 9% are suffering from a state of confusion. A few months later, JAMA Neurology published another study on 214 patients in China in which at least 78 patients were found to have neurologic manifestations. Some studies also found that the use of steroids can cause neuropsychiatric problems among patients.
Where Covid-19 is itself a war for the ones who are battling the disease with the society’s acceptions, these mental illnesses which have been long researched on, and now are coming true would definitely be a worrisome situation for patients who have suffered the virus.
