COVID-19 And Your Mental Health — Are They Related?
Can having COVID-19 be a risk factor for developing a new mental health disorder? It’s no secret that living through a pandemic has been incredibly stressful for a lot of people. But is the COVID-19 virus itself causing mental health disorders in diagnosed patients? According to a recent study published in the "Lancet Journal of Psychiatry," possibly so.
The Research
The study found that between 14 and 90 days after a COVID-19 diagnosis, around 5.8% of recovered patients went to a health care provider and were diagnosed with a new mental health disorder. The researchers compared this number with new mental health disorder diagnoses following a variety of other illnesses like the flu, respiratory tract infections or skin infections. They found that only 2.5 to 3.4% developed a mental health disorder after recovering. While those numbers seem close, that is a big difference statistically speaking. Many more individuals developed a new mental health disorder following a COVID-19 infection than any other illness, with a majority of the diagnosed disorders being anxiety and mood disorders such as depression.
Alex Podowski, L.P.C., an intensive outpatient program therapist at Texas Health Behavioral Health Center in Uptown, thinks the exploration of this topic is fantastic.
“It’s great that they are studying COVID-19 mental health outcomes so early on,” Podowski says. “Usually mental health impacts are such an afterthought. Doctors can now utilize this study early in follow-up care — checking on depression, stress and anxiety upon recovering from COVID-19. This gives the general population a greater chance to get ahead of the potential mental health concerns that can come out of a COVID-19 infection.”
Another interesting finding from the study was that having a previously diagnosed mental health disorder seemed to be a risk factor for susceptibility to COVID-19. We don’t typically think that having something like depression or anxiety would cause us to be more likely to get sick, but Podowski says there are a few reasons why that might happen.
“Sometimes with a mental health diagnosis, the level of stress the body is put under is far greater than someone without a diagnosis,” she notes. “There is a higher level of susceptibility to getting sick when our stress is at an unmanageable level — our immune system can become more compromised.”
Podowski mentions that the amount of exposure to the COVID-19 virus could be another reason why a previous mental health disorder diagnosis might increase susceptibility to the virus.
“If you are a front-line worker and have [a high-stress job], there is a much higher likelihood you will become infected with COVID-19 compared to a counterpart who is working from home and can hunker down to reduce exposure,” she explains.
Click here to read the full article at TexasHealth.org.
