(Newser)
– An Illinois family speaks out when the husband and father of two children ended their lives saying they did so as a result of “COVID psychosis.” Morris’ Ben Price committed suicide 16 days after being diagnosed with COVID-19 in February. The 48-year-old farmer and married father of two spent four days in hospital with respiratory problems and then returned home with a different person, widow Jennifer Price told WGN. “He just walked by the house and repeated things. And he wasn’t even in his normal tone of voice,” she says. “I just kept saying, ‘I’m sorry, I’m so scared.’ He looked out the window and only cared about things that didn’t even happen.” He was prescribed medication to calm him down, but he died shortly afterwards from suicide. “Our Ben would never have left us,” Price says. But “it was not our Ben.”
Doctors have described rare cases of psychosis after COVID-19. “In fact, it seems that COVID-19 may have a two-way relationship with mental illness, so experiencing mental illness increases the risk of developing COVID-19, but COVID-19 infection also increases the risk of mental illness. later, “says a magazine published last month in Progress in Neurology and Psychiatry. It refers to a study that found that 18% of 62,354 patients had a psychiatric diagnosis (5.8% represented a first diagnosis) in the 90 days following the diagnosis of COVID-19. But “the type of neurological and cognitive problems and even emotional and psychiatric problems as part of a Covid infection” are not fully understood, infectious disease expert Emily Landon tells WGN. Until they are, Price wants families to be on guard. (Learn more about neurological symptoms here.)