Via The Guardian: 'Sheer fear': mental health impacts of Covid-19 come to fore. Excerpt:
Two months after falling ill with Covid-19, Julie had her first hallucination. “It started slowly. I was struggling to track the plot of a TV show, then I couldn’t read the words on my phone screen,” she said.
Things deteriorated, with an overwhelming sense of her mind and body being consumed. “I know it sounds crazy, and I don’t know how to properly articulate it, but in the moment it really felt like something was taking over my brain and my body.
“I was so convinced that was happening that I made my sister promise to remember a code word so she’d know if I was still in my body.”
Amid these delusions, Julie, 36, from Minnesota, was eventually taken to hospital by her family. “My mom told the ER doctor that I was recovering from Covid and that they were concerned this was a strange side-effect. He agreed it was possible, but didn’t seem to have any treatment to suggest.”
Julie is not alone. As the long and lingering effects of Covid on physical health are emerging, so too are its impacts on mental health.
NHS England has announced that more staff are being trained to treat people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in preparation for a potential increase in demand for mental health services as a result of the coronavirus crisis.
Almost 3,000 trainees are expected to start courses in psychological therapies and former staff are being asked to consider returning to frontline roles in preparation for growing numbers of people suffering from anxiety, depression and related conditions.
NHS England said it hoped to boost the number of advanced clinical practitioners, psychiatrists and mental health nurses over the next few months.
Research from Italy found that more than half of those admitted to hospital with Covid-19 had a psychiatric disorder a month later, with 28% showing signs of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 31% depression and 42% anxiety. Insomnia and obsessive-compulsive symptoms were also common.
A study by researchers at University College London (UCL) also flagged psychiatric and neurological problems following Covid infections. The husband of one woman discharged from hospital found her behaving oddly, taking her coat on and off repeatedly and saying she saw lions and monkeys in the house.
It is not only those ill enough to be admitted to hospital who are affected, as members of a Covid-19 group on the social media platform Slack, who include Julie, attest.
Before Covid struck, Dawn, 48, also a member of the Slack group, was an organ transplant coordinator in Philadelphia. Now she is unemployed, and on a recent visit to friends took half an hour to feel comfortable getting out of the car.
After Dawn was diagnosed with Covid, her anxieties about the disease grew. She experienced chest pains and panic attacks. “I would walk around the house [at night] and make sure everyone was breathing,” she said. In June, as her younger daughter became increasingly concerned and physical causes were ruled out, Dawn sought mental health services.
She has since been diagnosed with PTSD, generalised anxiety disorder and major depression, and is undergoing an intensive outpatient therapy programme. “I am two months into my therapy and … still having quite a difficult time getting out of my house,” she said.
