One in three people who overcome the novel coronavirus suffer from a neurological or psychiatric diagnosis six months on, according to a study conducted on the mental toll the infection takes on people who are survivors of the infection.
Authors said the research, printed Wednesday in The Lancet Psychiatry journal, proved that Covid-19 patients were significantly more likely to develop brain conditions than those suffering from other respiratory tract infections.
Studying the health records of more than 230,000 patients who had recovered from Covid-19, they found that 34% were diagnosed with a neurological or psychiatric condition within six months.
The most common conditions were anxiety (17% of patients) and mood disorders (14%).
For 13% of the patients, the disorders were their first diagnosis of a mental health issue.
Incidence of neurological disorders such as brain haemorrhage (0.6%), stroke (2.1%) and dementia (0.7%) was lower overall than for psychiatric disorders but the risk for brain disorders was generally higher in patients who had severe Covid-19.
The authors also examined data from more than 100,000 patients diagnosed with influenza and more than 236,000 diagnosed with any respiratory tract infection.
They found there was overall a 44% greater risk of neurological and mental health diagnoses after Covid-19 than after flu, and a 16% higher risk than with respiratory tract infections.
Paul Harrison, lead author from the University of Oxford, said that while the individual risk of neurological and psychiatric orders from Covid-19 was small, the overall effect across the global population could prove to be “substantial”.
“Many of these conditions are chronic,” he said.
“As a result, health care systems need to be resourced to deal with the anticipated need, both within primary and secondary care services.”
