In a new study from Washington University in St. Louis, researchers found those who have had COVID-19 have a much higher chance of experiencing mental health problems.
Such disorders include anxiety, depression, and suicide ideation, as well as opioid use disorder, illicit drug and alcohol use disorders, and disturbances in sleep and cognition.
The team found that such disorders arose within a year after recovery from the virus in people who had serious as well as mild infections.
People who had COVID-19 were 60% more likely to suffer from mental health problems than those who were not infected.
This leads to increased use of prescription medication to treat such problems and increased risks of substance use disorders including opioids and nonopioids such as alcohol and illicit drugs.
More than 403 million people globally and 77 million in the U.S. have been infected with the virus since the pandemic started.
The researchers analyzed the health information of 153,848 adults who had tested positive for COVID-19 sometime from March 1, 2020, through Jan. 15, 2021, and who had survived the first 30 days of the disease.
Compared with those without any infections, people who contracted COVID-19 were 35% more likely to suffer from anxiety disorders and nearly 40% more likely to experience depression or stress-related disorders.
This coincided with a 55% increase in the use of antidepressants and a 65% growth in the use of benzodiazepines to treat anxiety.
Similarly, people who had recovered from COVID-19 were 41% more likely to have sleep disorders and 80% more likely to experience neurocognitive decline.
The latter refers to forgetfulness, confusion, a lack of focus, and other impairments commonly known together as brain fog.
More worrisome, the team found compared with people without COVID-19, those infected with the virus were 34% more likely to develop opioid use disorders and 20% more likely to develop nonopioid substance use disorders involving alcohol or illegal drugs.
They were also 46% more likely to have suicidal thoughts.
The team says people need to know that if they have had COVID-19 and are struggling mentally, they’re not alone, and they should seek help immediately and without shame.
It’s critical that doctors recognize this now, diagnose it and address it before the opioid crisis snowballs and we start losing more people to suicide.
If you care about mental health, please read studies that common drugs for inflammation, depression, alcoholism may treat COVID-19, and 7 things to avoid when you are depressed.
For more information about Covid, please see recent studies about a new drug that could prevent COVID-19, and results showing that breakthrough COVID infections very mild for vaccinated people.
The study is published in The BMJ and was conducted by Ziyad Al-Aly et al.
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