A small number of patients with COVID-19 experience severe psychiatric symptoms after recovering from the virus.
The New York Times reports that several doctors have observed psychiatric symptoms in patients recovering from COVID-19 who had no previously recorded history of mental illness.
Studies in the United Kingdom and Spain have found that a small number of patients hospitalized with coronavirus developed a “new psychosis,” the Times notes, with similar anecdotal reports from the Midwest.
The Times did not speak to any patients who had experienced psychiatric symptoms, but some patients received permission to describe their cases.
A 42-year-old mother in New York continuously described seeing her children murdered and said she heard voices telling her to kill her children and herself. In New York City, a 30-year-old man tried to strangle his cousin after convincing himself that they planned to kill him. A 49-year-old man described hearing voices and believed himself to be the devil.
The doctor who treated the 42-year-old mother, Hisam Goueli, told the Times that the cases were unique because of patients’ awareness of their declining mental health.
“People with psychosis don’t have the idea that they have lost touch with reality,” Goueli said.
Goueli also noted that it was unusual for most of these patients to be between 30 and 40 years old. According to the doctor, the symptoms described by patients were more often attributed to schizophrenia in young people or dementia in older people.
Experts have claimed that viral effects on the brain can be attributed to the immune system’s response or even to the physical symptoms patients experience.
“Some of the neurotoxins that are reactions to immune activation can reach the brain, through the blood-brain barrier, and can induce this damage,” said Vilma Gabbay, co-director of the Montefiore Einstein Institute for Psychiatric Research ( PRIME).
Experts who spoke to the Times agreed with Gabbay’s assessment, saying that a continued immune response after a patient has recovered could affect the brain, although symptoms may depend on the region of the brain. affected brain.
Robert Yolken, a professor of neurovirology at Johns Hopkins University, told the Times, “There are people who have neurological symptoms, there are people with psychiatry, and many people have a combination.”
The Times notes that similar cases were observed in past viruses such as the Spanish flu of 1918, SARS and MERS. Although the mechanism by which these symptoms occur is not well understood, experts told the Times that studying these patients could help better understand psychosis.
The length of time patients suffer from psychiatric symptoms is not certain. One patient described in the Times piece recovered after 40 days, while another continued to have psychotic problems more than two months after being admitted.