The most important study dealing with the impact of Covid-19 on mental health has recently been published. According to the researchers, one in three patients suffer from neurological or psychological disorders after recovering from the coronavirus. If the most recurring problems are not the most serious, the researchers have nevertheless evoked a third wave psychiatric.
Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, doctors have occasionally reported neurological and psychiatric sequelae in cured patients. However, data to assess the effects of the coronavirus on the brain were lacking. According to a study published in The Lancet Psychatry on April 6, 2021, one in three patients had a diagnosis of neurological or psychiatric disorders within six months of their infection. The team from the University of Oxford (United Kingdom) behind this work examined the medical data of 236,379 former patients of the coronavirus. This is the largest study to date on the effects of coronavirus on the brain.
Among the most frequent diagnoses, we find anxiety (17%) and mood disorders (14%). In addition, more serious disorders are much less frequent, such as strokes (2.1%), dementia (0.7%) or cerebral hemorrhages (0.6%). Small clarification that is important, these results do not concern not only severe cases or requiring hospitalization. They also relate to simple forms of the disease.
British scientists also looked at data from more than 100,000 patients diagnosed with the flu. They also considered information from more than 236,000 patients diagnosed with respiratory infections. However, the risk of neurological or psychiatric diagnoses was overall 44% higher after Covid-19 than after the flu and 16% higher than after a respiratory tract infection. For the researchers, the risk at the individual level of most of these neurological and psychiatric disorders remains low. On the other hand, they did mention a possibly considerable effect for health systems, simply because of the magnitude of the pandemic.
Furthermore, many of these disorders are chronic, so the effects of the coronavirus could last for many years . Thus, the scientists of the study plead for adaptation and thus equip health systems with the resources in order to meet the needs in order to take care of everyone during what already seems to be a third wave of coronavirus. psychiatric order.
