22 ms·

One in five Covid-19 patients develop mental illness within 90 days – study

• marknutter 6y ago
  My wife developed hypochondria after her bout with COVID, but I seriously doubt it had to do with the virus itself, and instead had more to do with the uncertainty and fear over the pandemic in general. She was told at the hospital that this type of thing was becoming more and more common, regardless of whether people actually first contracted the virus.
  • Wintamute 6y ago
    I think it would be unusual _not_ to develop hypochondria at some point this year. The levels of existential threat, perceived or otherwise, have been sky high.
  • kzrdude 6y ago
    Everyone had some form of hypochondria this year I think. In march I had the fever thermometer on my office desk, because it was used every day. Those days are gone.
    • disabled 6y ago
      I had chills nonstop all through March and April, likely due to stress. I literally wore 2 jackets and wrapped myself in a blanket, only to still be freezing cold (and drenched in sweat). But I have 2 rare immune-mediated neurological diseases affecting my peripheral nervous system. So, undoubtedly my immune system is messed up. I still get chills off and on but it has been better after moving from the US to Croatia (I am a dual citizen of both countries). I think the stress of Trump (as a disabled person) and the coronavirus situation in the US really messed up my health overall and eventually caused these chills. Coronavirus pandemic did totally change my medical care situation in the US for the worst too. I still wear a continuous temperature monitor (using a zero heat flux sensor—it’s used in critically ill patients) to help pick up on these events. The device I use was recently cleared as a medical device under emergency use authorization by the FDA in the US: https://corebodytemp.com/ https://corebodytemp.com/
• eznzt 6y ago
  Depression... come on, who isn't depressed?
  • collyw 6y ago
    Especially with the hysteria in the media over Covid and lockdown on top of that. I am surprised it is as low as one in five. This headline will be a self full filling prophecy.
    • misterc123 6y ago
      You are spot on, complete self fulfilling prophecy. This pandemic will go down in history as psychological terrorism. I feel terrible for people who are already diagnosed with depression/anxiety. Covid has created more collateral damage than damage pertaining to the virus.
      • mlang23 6y ago
        Fully agree.
      • djsumdog 6y ago
        Yea, I think in 2040, historians, doctors and psychologists will look back at this era as the largest case of mass hysteria. I do not deny a lot of people have died from this, but it's mostly the elderly that could have been protected. I also think the death counts are over-estimates, while everyone else thinks they're under-estimates. The lockdowns do little to nothing and need to end. Human beings are not machines that can be places in low power mode or gears that can be stopped.
        • collyw 6y ago
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHfOcGm5xiA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHfOcGm5xiA They appear to count any death that was tested positive for coronavirus as a Covid death. Coincidentally these countries are all near the top of the list when sorting by deaths per million.
• Uhrheber 6y ago
  (cough)Trump(cough)
  • richardARPANET 6y ago
    You can thank Trump for the fastest Vaccine development in history.
    • gbrown 6y ago
      No, you can't. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/health/pfizer-covid-19-vaccine.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/health/pfizer-covid-19-va...
      • Wintamute 6y ago
        I take your point, and agree, but it's become deeply untenable to share a NYTimes article to prove any contested political point. That place has well and truly set fire to its reputation as an impartial reporter.
        • gbrown 6y ago
          It wasn't an appeal to authority - you can look up the facts in any source you like. It also isn't a political point, but a question of fact.
    • WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
      Incorrect, existing coronavirus vaccines were used as an example.
    • dang 6y ago
      Hey, can you please stop using HN for political battle? You're a good user otherwise but you've been posting a lot of that, and it's not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• dtertman 6y ago
  I'm a bit confused about how this compares to non-COVID-19 patients. The Mayo clinic [1] shows the same number, one in five, for the general population in a given year. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/mental-illness/symptoms-causes/syc-20374968 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/mental-illnes...
  • JoeAltmaier 6y ago
    90 days vs 1 year?
    • dtertman 6y ago
      Yeah, agree, but how do we compare time slices over probability?
      • JoeAltmaier 6y ago
        That's tricky, agreed. One chance in 1000 every day adds up to a 30% chance in a year for instance. And 1-in-5 every 90 days equals 4-in-5 over a year. If the risk doesn't change over time (if the covid effect is persistent for a year)
        • dtertman 6y ago
          > (if the covid effect is persistent for a year) I think that's the important bit. The article (at least) didn't indicate that the same standard applies at the 180, 270, or 360 day mark, so I don't think we can just say COVID patients roll the dice on mental illness 4x as often as the general population. If that's actually being implied, it's horrible.
      • 3PS 6y ago
        I feel like you'd probably want to use a Poisson distribution for this, but I can't be bothered to work it out fully.
      • vharuck 6y ago
        In a back-of-the-napkin, spherical-cow, way, it's not too hard. 20% chance it happens in a year means an 80% chance it doesn't. Let's assume (this is the spherical cow) each day has the same chance. We can find it by looking at the chance an adult doesn't get a mental illness in a year. Then, because that's the chance they won't get it every day, it's easier to figure out the daily chance of not getting one. 0.8 = x^365 x = 0.8^(1/365) x = 0.9993888346422956 1 - x = 0.0006111653577044462 So, overall, adults have roughly a 0.061% chance each day of getting a mental illness. Compared to the daily risk for this 90-day period 0.8 = x^90 x = 0.8^(1/90) x = 0.9993888346422956 1 - x = 0.0024763016863216247 So about 0.248% each day for the COVID patients. That's more than four times as high as for all adults. Remember, this is spherical cow stuff. Numbers to use in other calculations need a more experienced statistical approach, I'm sure. But this at least tells us something's different.
• PaulKeeble 6y ago
  "Anxiety, depression and insomnia" all the hallmarks of the beginning of ME/CFS or PVS or whatever you want to call this horrific condition. 20% is lower than the 35% that get lasting effects in the Irish nurses study but its also higher than the long term likely to suffer ME/CFS for many years to the rest of their life which is estimated to be around 7% based on the papers that China produced on SARS. As far as we understand its due to a reduction in the 5-HTP path way which leads to a reduction in Serotonin. There is also a further effect on Gaba as well with a bit more time. Ron Davis and other researchers have done some work to understanding the genetic switch or mechanism but alas they aren't there yet with an affirmation as to the root cause. Alas the depression and sleep problems are just the beginning, the condition gets much worse and more debilitating than Multiple sclerosis as it progresses and the chronic fatigue and exertion intolerance kicks in. Its excruciatingly painful and poorly treated by Doctors. The news all points to very bad for Covid19 and ME/CFS results unfortunately, it could be a much bigger contributor to loss of people from the workplace than death itself as most sufferers don't ever work again.
  • mancerayder 6y ago
    >"Anxiety, depression and insomnia" all the hallmarks of the beginning of ME/CFS or PVS or whatever you want to call this horrific condition. It's also the hallmark of lockdowns since March, political uncertainty and hostility with peers, economic uncertainty, and pandemic threats and uncertainty. All with a hysterical media, an all-or-nothing us-and-them type of conversation on just about any topic, and continual uncertainties. The viral threat is real, but so are mental health considerations that seem to be completely overlooked by popular discourse.
• btilly 6y ago
  Given that anxiety and stress related disorders seem to be the main mental health result, I think that this boils down to, "Scary and stressful pandemic is scary and stressful."
  • asdfman123 6y ago
    Stressful events trigger all kinds of mental illness. Who wouldn't be traumatized after spending weeks in quarantine, or worse, in a hospital without any visitors -- with your life in the hands of strangers that are separated from by a layer of plastic at all times.
  • corobo 6y ago
    throw in a sprinkle of getting checked out medically normalises being checked out medically so you're more likely to go back for other things I reckon. It wasn't till I needed to go to the hospital for a physical injury (plus the times popping back for physio) that I started going to the GP for mental issues too
  • p_j_w 6y ago
    Now explain dementia.
    • btilly 6y ago
      People who have COVID-19 have health problems and get screened for all sorts of things. Dementia that had been there all along are therefore is more likely to get diagnosed.
• hcks 6y ago
  Layman hypothesis: anxious person gets Covid, goes to her doctor 3 months after because she thinks she is experiencing long term effects, and gets diagnosed for her anxiety instead
  • treeman79 6y ago
    look at various health forums. Autoimmune in particular. This is such a common pattern. People are dismissed for years before getting proper treatment. Some conditions the time to diagnosis is seven years. Entire time people are being told it’s in their head.
    • bawolff 6y ago
      And some people really do have anxiety (And just because its "all in your head" doesn't make it any less "real"). In particular, I think its pretty reasonable to assume the pandemic and other ongoing issues of 2020, will cause severe anxiety issues in a bunch of the population. Its been a hell of a year.
      • treeman79 6y ago
        This is a good point. There is a feedback loop to anxiety and stress and illness. Some illnesses cause minor problems for decades, but you remain mostly fine. Add in a huge dose of stress hormones, and that minor condition can go crazy. You now have more things to stress about. Inflammation can cause inflammation. Sometimes breaking the cycle is enough.
      • notabee 6y ago
        The brain is just another organ, and also vulnerable to inflammation and immune effects. And it can in turn cause or worsen them too in the rest of the body. Medicine truly must stop making psychiatric diagnoses without looking for systemic causes, and vice versa. And I think good doctors understand this. However, like any profession, there are plenty of not so good doctors who lazily throw people away with vague anxiety or pain syndrome diagnoses.
  • 6y ago
• mixedCase 6y ago
  No mention I can see of what's the rate for general population living under lockdown, and those suffering from the flu or other similarly draining diseases.
• comicjk 6y ago
  According to this epidemiologist, the comparable figure for influenza is 13%, so this is not so unusual for respiratory viruses. https://twitter.com/GidMK/status/1326041350404415489 https://twitter.com/GidMK/status/1326041350404415489
  • guscost 6y ago
    20% sounds right on the money for a respiratory virus that is the subject of a worldwide panic.
  • dtech 6y ago
    Anyone know what "no control for SES" from that tweet means?
    • DeBraid 6y ago
      Likely > socioeconomic status (SES) https://www.jstor.org/stable/23363545?seq=1 https://www.jstor.org/stable/23363545?seq=1
  • dtech 6y ago
    Interesting, didn't know that. This makes it a bit more likely that the 13% -> 18% increase is related to general societal impacts of Covid rather than Covid being worse in itself.
• collyw 6y ago
  Given lockdown and absolute hysteria in the media over covid, I wouldn't be surprised if this applies to the whole population. Are there any numbers for comparison?
• Devils-Avocado 6y ago
  I had COVID and felt like I had lingering symptoms for months. As soon as I moved to a non-lockdown country those symptoms immediately disappeared.
  • sangli 6y ago
    I am not sure what you are trying to convey.
    • mlang23 6y ago
      I totally get what he is trying to say. It is becoming so obvious after 8 months of social isolation, lockdowns and a ton of toxicity in the community. The aftermath of this "lets lock down everything to protect a few" strategy is going to be horrible. Not just economically. Lockdown lovers seem to think people are machines that you can turn off and on whenever you like. Thats not the case.
    • andreygrehov 6y ago
      Probably that psychosomatic is real?
    • guscost 6y ago
      That these symptoms might be caused by the hysteria over the virus, as much as the virus itself.
    • matz1 6y ago
      Lockdown and the fear mongering can cause those anxiety/depression/mental issue. Its a cure that worse than the disease.
      • tsimionescu 6y ago
        So can thousands of people dying all around you. Lockdowns are much, much better than seeing grandparents or parents die in over-exerted hospitals, seeing already sick children or young people who were managing their diabetes, congenital heart conditions, cancers, HIV infections etc. suddenly taken by this horrible, preventable disease.
• Infinitesimus 6y ago
  There is a bit more detail here if mods want to change the link: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/10/nearly-one-in-five-covid-patients-later-diagnosed-with-mental-illness-study https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/10/nearly-one-in-... Looks like the data is from: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(20)30462-4/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0... To be clear, this does not demonstrate that Covid infection causes mental illness from a neurological perspective.
  • fulafel 6y ago
    Thanks. This data is from the USA, it would be interesting to compare to countries with free healthcare.
    • devxpy 6y ago
      And those that didn't have an active civil rights movement erupting in the midst of it.
      • bawolff 6y ago
        You're being downvoted, but I think that's a reasonable point... I don't live in the USA, but given everything that's going on there, I would be pretty stressed if I did.
    • creativityEng 6y ago
      Hyperbole is against the rules here. You should refer to it as tax funded healthcare. As a note I'm not against healthcare reform, but it's against the HN rules.
      • godelzilla 6y ago
        Like how the current system is called casino funded healthcare?
      • tdfx 6y ago
• treeman79 6y ago
  Congratulations, you have earned the achievement “chronic condition”. Your rewards are as follows. You have max exhaustion at all hours of the day! Exercise recovery is bumped from next day to 2 weeks! Your pain level is now on par with dying cancer patients! Everyone now considers you lazy and incompetent! Doctors now blame all symptoms on anxiety! You gain +1 to medical research ability. But -20 to Reputation. You now get spontaneous and useless medical advise from people that believe in essential oil. You are now on timer with your job until sympathy runs out! Disability now can mock you openly as clearly your faking and don’t have a real condition! You are now a burden to your family! +10 sneak score; you quickly learn to hide your suffering! +20 to loneliness! -20 to persuasion! Asking for help gets little from doctor's. +10 Planning! Your kids may be orphans soon, make sure they get taken care of. Read fine print on death benefits. ——- Staying positive when you have a chronic condition is incredibly difficult. Your not going to get through it without losing your mind now and then.
  • sosuke 6y ago
    Damn you really hit the nail on the head. "Invisibile illness" is how I've heard and referred to it. Losing your mind now and then is absolutely okay. --- I'm paraphrasing someone close to me --- God is giving me only what I can handle. Making me stronger in the process. Something even worse is coming down the line so get ready.
    • treeman79 6y ago
      For a dank [religion] perspective. This life is a test for what comes next. How will you be graded? Pretty sure a pile of gold doesn’t win points.
  • jdthedisciple 6y ago
    is this sarcasm ?
    • treeman79 6y ago
      Told in a sarcastic tone. But all are true. Had some really bad years before figuring out what was wrong. Found support groups. All of those points are sadly the norm.
• loblollyboy 6y ago
  Common sense suggests correlation
• misterc123 6y ago
  Another click bait article. Sad to see psychological terrorism so prominent throughout the United States let alone globally. I'm genuinely surprised hacker news hasn't built a feature to filter out this junk, but of course disinformation is more profitable than real credible studies. This is a great example of the same psychological exploit used with push notifications just in click bait form... Anyone else tired of the internet being abused in this form?
  • misterc123 6y ago
    For anyone wondering my entire family has passed COVID, 0 out of 5 of us have developed mental health issues. TLDR; People get paid more monies to scare you and lure in your attention by exploiting that vector of your psychology. Don't be afraid of COVID, do be afraid of countries locking you in your house to "protect you".
    • neuronic 6y ago
      Do you understand what statistics and populations are and that they go beyond your family? I have a connection to Bergamo, Italy and seeing them do triage (selecting who gets treated and who is rejected) last March/April was brutal. Your comment is disrespectful to all of those who died, are currently dying or who lost one. And to those who suffer long term consequences that will affect them all of their life. It's incredible that after nearly 1 year of constant information bombardment you are still too ignorant to understand that even 15% problematic cases will overwhelm the system and cause issues that you are completely incapable of understanding. Yes, 80% of infected will be just fine but the other 15-20% are what brings our healthcare system to its knees. Just be happy you were in the 80% and shut up. You probably even think of yourself as a smart person (you are not), why else would you come to THIS forum and post this breathtaking bullshit?
      • misterc123 6y ago
        It's incredible that you don't question information WHEN IT IS FED TO YOU and DISINFORMATION IS MORE PROFITABLE THAN FACTUAL INFORMATION- this is the current business model. I am by no means discrediting anyone who has suffered, I am simply stating that BY EXPERIENCE of contracting the virus alongside my own family, nobody has developed mental illnesses. I understand that this is an insufficient sample size, I am simply making a statement based on real experience in combating the virus. I don't question my intelligence and I will not be censored while using a public good. You may want to question your own intelligence level for taking my comments to the utmost extreme, and making emotionally irrational hatred comments back at me. Jog on, I hope you don't continue to succumb to the psychological terrorism that is living in your head rent free.
• jojo2333 6y ago
  lol, fear mongering much
  • dboreham 6y ago
    It's one word. For some reason social media posters don't tend to know that, I've noticed.
• pizza234 6y ago
  To put this in perspective (and at least trying to approach the data critically), according to another research¹, the "% diagnosed with a first psychiatric disorder within 14-90 days of a health event" is 5.8% for Covid-19, and 2.5% for fracture (!). ¹=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/10/nearly-one-in-five-covid-patients-later-diagnosed-with-mental-illness-study https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/10/nearly-one-in-...
• jokethrowaway 6y ago
  I'm pretty sure I didn't get covid and I developed a mental illness from lockdown life! Go figure.
• tboyd47 6y ago
  My first question, after reading the abstract, would be, "Did they control for the effect of job type on stress level?" Some jobs require COVID-19 testing every week, and some don't require it at all. It makes sense intuitively that those people whose jobs require them to take a COVID-19 test would be over-represented in the case count, and that those jobs would be comparably high-stress. They did not mention job or career choice in the study, nor did they mention stress except in the context of PTSD. They hint that they did not look at socioeconomic factors at all. This is how the bureaucratic elite will eventually try to explain the severe mental health crisis unfolding before us as a biological effect of the novel coronavirus, when in fact, it was caused by their own choices to impose restrictive lockdowns.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• creativityEng 6y ago
  What is the control? I had 4 friends tell me about their mental health collapsing since the April lockdowns. 2 have started taking lots of drugs. Heck before I started this new job, I might be technically depressed. I had never felt like that before.
  • shadowgovt 6y ago
    Exactly. I'll have to read the study to find out, but three axes I'm immediately curious about: 1) Are we seeing a side-effect of bothering to look for mental illness in a generally-underdiagnosed population? Maybe most people have a bit, and scrutinizing people that ended up in the hospital is finding things that most mental health research participants aren't screened for. 2) I don't have a mechanism in mind, but it's always important to filter for correlation without causation, or even for reverse-causation; is there something about predisposition for mental illness that makes one more susceptible to COVID? 3) COVID hits an elderly population harder, and age is already correlated with mental illness. How did they control for age?
• billsmithaustin 6y ago
  From the article: “In the three months following testing positive for COVID-19, 1 in 5 survivors were recorded as having a first time diagnosis of anxiety, depression or insomnia. This was about twice as likely as for other groups of patients in the same period, the researchers said.” I wonder if that means twice as likely as for some other groups of patients, or twice as likely as all other groups of patients. I remember reading the Spanish flu caused cognitive impairment in some patients, too.
• sharken 6y ago
  Could the fact that the entire society has been shut down and your normal ways interrupted also be a major factor in this ? “This is likely due to a combination of the psychological stressors associated with this particular pandemic and the physical effects of the illness” certainly seems to support that notion. Sounds like a study without any useful conclusion.
  • JoeAltmaier 6y ago
    Did they give the stats for non-covid folks? That would be useful to compare. Since everyone's normal ways have been interrupted.
    • vharuck 6y ago
      From TFA: >The study, published in The Lancet Psychiatry journal, analysed electronic health records of 69 million people in the United States, including more than 62,000 cases of COVID-19. The findings are likely to be the same for those afflicted by COVID-19 worldwide, the researchers said >In the three months following testing positive for COVID-19, 1 in 5 survivors were recorded as having a first time diagnosis of anxiety, depression or insomnia. This was about twice as likely as for other groups of patients in the same period, the researchers said. So still a doubling when compared to other people living in a pandemic society.
• charliebrownau 6y ago
  Convid 2020 is the mental illness Global Plandemic and Hoaxdown with 170 nations in league with Big Phama, Goverment and ' mainstream media ' --------- Also if anyone gets the China Convid 'infection' (aka flu) This is the actual Cure without a magic needle: * Hrdroxy chloroquine (HCQ) and Azithromycin for 6 days cures a person Take 2 200mg HCQ chloroquine pills per day, along with Azithromycin 500g once a day, + Zinc Supplments 200mg once a day Also supplment that with Vit C+D
• umvi 6y ago
  > This is likely due to a combination of the psychological stressors associated with this particular pandemic and the physical effects of the illness My money is more on "psychological stressors" aka media hysteria/social ostracization/etc. than "physical effects"
• rq1 6y ago
  Is all the data from the same period? Otherwise, there would be a confounding with lockdown and confinement.
• whywhywhywhy 6y ago
  >Anxiety, depression and insomnia I have all 3 of these + mental and physical exhaustion from barely leaving my flat for almost a year and now about to spend a the rest of a month not speaking in person to another human other than checkout staff. Haven't had COVID yet as far as I know.
  • rezeroed 6y ago
    Where I shop we have self-checkout. I haven't had a face to face conversation since the first London lockdown started, mid-March. I remain unconvinced that covid warrants such a gargantuan response, based on countless factors eg Sweden, Sage/Fergusson modelling blunders, UK stats authority highlighting governments incorrect data on eve of lockdown, etc, etc, it just goes on, but have very much enjoyed not having to commute to the office. Social life however couldn't be more dead.
• dathinab 6y ago
  Develop, or more like always had it AMD it just now surfaces due to the mental stress put on you by having covid (which isn't caused by covid but by how media reports about it, isolation and about how other people treat you?) > The study also found that people with a pre-existing mental illness were 65% more likely to be diagnosed with COVID-19 than those without. This sounds very misleading. I.e. it sounds like your are more likely to get covid-19 if you have a mental illness but that's not what it actually implies. More precise without additional information like the total percent of people tested which have mental illnesses, the consideration when it counts as a mental illness and how they don't someone had one and most importantly if they consider pre-test or pre-pandemy this can't be interpreted reasonable. Other missing parts include e.g. how likely someone with mental illness is to test themself compared to one which isn't.
  • sb52191 6y ago
    "or more like always had it AMD it just now surfaces due to the mental stress put on you by having covid" FWIW I found this study while trying to find the original study: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(20)30421-1/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0... Although this study is on people in Korea, it would be better if it was done on Americans to make it a better comparison.
  • Aretas77 6y ago
    Same thoughts crossed my mind. Described mental illnesses appeared much more likely due to isolation and a lot of alone time while being sick (or just being quarantined) rather from COVID-19.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• anoncake 6y ago
  I think this is the study: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(20)30462-4/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0...
  • anoncake 6y ago
    If there is any reason for downvoting this other than not liking other comments of mine, I'd like to hear it.
    • apricotpancake 6y ago
      I think it’s primarily that that study was retracted[0] 0. https://youtu.be/QB7ACr7pUuE https://youtu.be/QB7ACr7pUuE
• LatteLazy 6y ago
  I had a cold and couldn't get a test 8 weeks back. No serious illness, no loss of taste/smell. Around the same time my depression which I've been gradually recovering from (got off SSRIs 12month ago) got a lot lot worse. I wish I could have gotten a test and at least know if the two were coincidental (literally happened at the same time) let alone causal...
• 32joiJI32 6y ago
  Let the natural selection do its job and clean the planet from weak entities.
• grawprog 6y ago
  The article provides no link to the actual study. The article mentions this >In the three months following testing positive for COVID-19, 1 in 5 survivors were recorded as having a first time diagnosis of anxiety, depression or insomnia. This was about twice as likely as for other groups of patients in the same period, the researchers said. Without any link to the study, this is meaningless information. This article is implying the virus directly caused those symptoms. There's no mention of the effects a possible quarantine may have on one's mental health. Typically, if one is diagnosed with covid, you're put into isolation and quarantine for a minimum of 14 days. After returning from this, your life is affected. Your work, your friends, your family. Is it really any wonder someone might experience anxiety, depression or insomnia after contracting covid and dealing with thr effects of the virus, both the direct physical ones and everything that surrounds contracting covid. Why is this assumed to be something the virus is directly causing as a symptom rather than looking into anything else?
  • dehrmann 6y ago
    It'd also be worth comparing it to the population as a whole which I'm sure is also seeing an increase in things like "anxiety, depression and insomnia."
    • timr 6y ago
      The paper compares to a group of people diagnosed with influenza (and a number of other things), as a control. For the flu, they find that 13.3% of these people had the same symptoms (vs. 18.8% in the covid cohort; ratio = 1.41). This is in Table 3. Table 2 shows you the similar analysis, but just for first-time diagnoses, and these are 5.8% (covid) vs. 2.8% (influenza) for a ratio of 2.07. So while there do appear to be differences in the groups, focusing on the absolute percentage in the covid cohort alone is a misleading and fear-mongering way to interpret the results. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(20)30462-4/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0...
  • TearsInTheRain 6y ago
    Not to mention you have to tell all of your friends aand family that you were in contact with that you may have given them covid. Thats been a huge anxiety trigger for my friends that have gone through it. Can you imagine the guilt if someone you gave it to dies from it?
• djsumdog 6y ago
  Everyone's mental health is deteriorating in these lockdowns. This interpretation of the data seems lacking. The same study should be done in places with minimal lockdowns with their covid patients: Sweeden and South Dakota. What if it's just mental illness is just up due to the lockdowns, and recovering from COVID is just a false correlation? My mental health is deteriorating. I hate all of humanity. I can't stand most of my friends. I can't even stand reading most of the comments in this thread, which feel like they're going on with this insane hysteria that's sweeping our planet. Yes COVID is bad and has killed many elderly (95% over 55), but the majority of us have been put in lockdowns that are likely very ineffective. We're being told to cover our faces, our primary means of communicating with each other via facial expressions. Anyone trying to say the masks are not very effective (they're not) are being silenced on all platforms. This is insane and it's hysteria. History will not look back kindly at this time. We are not in this together. We're in this alone. Humanity is looking through the world through the eye of a straw.
  • dehrmann 6y ago
    > Anyone trying to say the masks are not very effective (they're not) I need to look into this again. Mid-summer, studies were either in vitro or limited to medical settings. One I saw analyzing a natural experiment didn't make it clear if their numbers were relative or absolute. It reported a 2% benefit, but that can mean very different things. Maybe there's something better out now. There was a comment I read on HN suggesting spread at home is where we should pay more attention. It explains why Bay Area-level masking hasn't ~eliminated new cases, why minority communities (read: larger households) are hit harder, and puts Sweden, a country where most people live alone, in context.
• m3kw9 6y ago
  It doesn't link if the mental health issues is due to Covid-19 affecting the brain, or that that shock and prolonged loniness due to being infected + even more extreme isolation due to quarantine causes the problems.
• jilles 6y ago
  I wonder how much of this is because of all the confinement, not being able to see your loved ones etc.
• deleted 6y ago
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• anonunivgrad 6y ago
  If you have a psychologist examine people, they will find a “mental illness” in some huge percent. People don’t understand what “mental illness” means. In fact, the definition is a hot topic of debate among psychologists and philosophers alike. But it basically boils down to some sufficiently undesirable behavior or thought pattern that we can measure and theorize about. Most of us could frame our flaws and anxieties as “mental illnesses” if we wanted to.
• deleted 6y ago
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• fouc 6y ago
  This is such a misleading/bad article. 12% already had pre-existing mental illness, and then afterwards 18% have it. Many things could explain the 4% increase, besides Covid-19. Also if some people are struggling with low-energy after covid-19, I imagine that could easily be confused for depression.
• LanguageGamer 6y ago
  Article doesn't include a link to the study. Here's a link: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(20)30462-4/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0...
• gonational 6y ago
  COVID-19 is like WebMD. The more you look at it the more symptoms you think you have. It’s simply impossible to reconcile the number of people who have been diagnosed with it and have zero symptoms with the number of people who have been diagnosed with it and somehow have dozens of symptoms ranging from heart failure to brain damage to hair loss, smell loss, vision problems; the whole thing reeks of absolute bullshit. I think what they[1] have done is figured out a way to tie a label, namely COVID-19, to any ailment that anyone already has, in order to scare people to death. Am I being careful, in case my assumptions are incorrect? Yes. Careful for myself and people I know and for strangers. However, I do not have to believe in this anti-scientific religion, and neither do you, in order to be a good person. I think we are far enough along now and have enough data that you have to be pretty gullible to believe COVID-19 is all the things they[1] claim it is. P.S., no successful mRNA vaccine on the schedule, despite dozens of years of research, but somehow we created a 90% successful mRNA vaccine in six months? I’ve got a bridge to sell you, if you believe this. 1. just they...
  • butbutemails2 6y ago
    [1] they = strawman
    • gonational 6y ago
      [1] they = me accepting that one does not need to know all the actors and motives, in order to see an obvious plot
      • butbutemails2 6y ago
        [1] they = you, who never leaves the house to socialize anyway so this pandemic is irrelevant for you
        • gonational 6y ago
          Shoot, you got me :/
• leftyted 6y ago
  Isn't being sick for two weeks a pretty good reason to be unhappy? There is pain, discomfort, shortness of breath. You may have trouble sleeping and lose your appetite. You won't be able to exercise. All of this will affect your mood. Do we gain anything by describing this as a "mental illness"?
  • npsimons 6y ago
    You sound like one of those people poo-pooing chronic depression. Classic /r/ThanksImCured material, right here.
    • leftyted 6y ago
      Maybe you should respond to what I wrote instead of telling me "what I sound like".
• tppiotrowski 6y ago
  Pneumonia in 2012. Craniotomy in 2016. Best advice I can give is to measure your recovery in weeks or months, not days. Day to day you might feel worse and think you’re relapsing/chronic but looking at your month to month progress will help smooth out the noise.
• vmception 6y ago
  When "not dying" is a super low bar. I look forward to seeing more about what is happening to the recovered people. The other 98%
• fareesh 6y ago
  This article simply does not pass the sniff test.
• timr 6y ago
  This is an extremely irresponsible headline, and should be changed. If you read the paper [1], "mental illness" is defined as a spectrum of things, the most common of which (Anxiety, depression and insomnia) affect large numbers of people anyway, and even more so during a period where we've completely up-ended normal life for a huge portion of society. Moreover, the paper makes it clear that 13.3% of influenza patients treated as a control also have the same spectrum of diagnoses (Table 3; 18.1% is the value for the covid cohort). For first diagnoses, the numbers are significantly smaller (Table 2; 5.8% for covid, vs. 2.8% for influenza controls). So while the paper has some ~possibly interesting things to say about relative risk (with the caveats I stated above), the headline is simply clickbait. [1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(20)30462-4/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0...
• andred14 6y ago
  Yaya keep feeding us BS. Everyone at my office had flu symptoms last winter/spring and now we are all recovered 100% NO mental illness lololol
• JSavageOne 6y ago
  > 13.3% of influenza patients also have the same spectrum of diagnoses I recently got and recovered from COVID-19. By far the worst part about having COVID-19 for me was the psychological toll and anxiety of having a virus that the governments and media make out to be as if it's as deadly as the bubonic plague, when in reality at least anecdotally for me and my friends who've gotten it, none of us experienced more than mild sickness, and all of us recovered within a week or two. When I first got COVID19, I remember telling my girlfriend, and her breaking down in tears, having told me horror stories of young healthy people who died from COVID. I mentioned "hey at least I'll have the antibodies / T Cells", and she responded that there have been cases of people getting reinfected, which may be true - but is certainly not the norm. You're just more likely to see these horror stories being paraded around the news than the vast majority of patients who only experience mild symptoms and recover with no lingering symptoms. I don't mean to dismiss the suffering of those who've fallen seriously ill and died from COVID as that is obviously tragic, but at least in my experience, none of my 20+ friends I've spoken to (mostly in their 20s / 30s) who got COVID got more than mild sickness, and all recovered after a week or two. Were we all lucky? Maybe. But my point is, there seems to be an enormous discrepancy between how the governments and media are portraying this disease, and the reality of this disease. Dishonest alarmist journalism like this that tries to paint a narrative of a deadly disease without putting numbers in proper context, calling "anxiety" a mental illness during a pandemic, not properly controlling for the general context of the fact that we're in a global pandemic with government lockdowns, travel bans, and people out of work is a serious problem that only exacerbates the general anxiety and depression of the public. Of course people should know about the horror stories too, but we're really not getting a balanced perspective here, which is a huge problem and has serious mental consequences.
  • cma 6y ago
    Seems you had no or almost no contacts with it in the age ranges it affects worst.
    • JSavageOne 6y ago
      I'm aware of that. Doesn't change the extreme narrative the government and media are peddling.
• Zelphyr 6y ago
  I can't help but wonder if this correlation over causation? You just had a disease that has rocked the entire planet, that is so new that nobody really knows a whole lot about it by comparison to other coronaviruses, that has killed a LOT of people, and has media outlets constantly talking about the effects of it. How could you not be anxious? And anxiety and depression often go hand-in-hand. So how do we know if it is the after affects of virus that is directly causing these issues?
• el_nahual 6y ago
  I'm 33 years old and assume I have a case of "long haul covid." Physical symptoms are a chronic shortness of breath & exhaustion. I get winded just talking on zoom. Pre covid I could run 3 miles no sweat. On the mental side I've also noticed effect: mostly depression, and it is totally correlated with the physical symptoms. On days where the shortness of breath is acute so is the depression. But here's the interesting thing: I'm not worried about the depression at all. In my late teens/early twenties I suffered from extreme depression. Thanks to {reasons} and {intervention}, I managed to overcome it by my late twenties, but it was a solid lost decade for me. I certainly wish I hadn't had that experience, but the silver lining is that I feel like I have practice with it. I hadn't felt depressed in years, but when I felt it on account of covid I was able to observe it and say "huh. I guess being sick made me depressed," which is vastly different than just being depressed without the ability to observe it. This has resulted in the realization that one can practice and train to deal with some mental health issues, and I feel like it's a skillset that I have now mastered. I didn't expect to have to use it again but here we are. As a young father, I hope to somehow pass this skillset on to my children without them having to go through the same experiences I did, and I wish that it were better woven into the fabric of our society. All societies teach some soft skills simply as part of their mores, taboos and worldviews and ours (western, american/americanized) IMHO fails utterly in this regard.
  • ryanmarsh 6y ago
    Do you mind sharing the treatment protocol you were prescribed or self-adopted?
    • el_nahual 6y ago
      Sadly, the answer involves many, many years. -------------------------- Things I'm certain helped: - Complete and total elimination of alcohol. I didn't have a sip of acohol for 6+ years. I will now occasionally have a beer, maybe 6 or so drinks per year? - 9 month leave of absence from school and work, moving back in with my very, very loving and kind parents. - Being showered with love and affection daily for years by close friends and family. -------------------------- Things that probably helped: - Talk therapy 3x a week for about a year, and weekly for about a year after that. - A heroic dose of psylocibin, about 5 years into my recovery. - Extreme amounts of exercise (real boxing) -------------------------- Things that were also included in treatment that probably didn't help but who knows: - I was on some SSRI (forget which) for about a year. - Three weeks of an involuntary stay at a run-down mental health clinic. This mostly had a positive impact on my understanding of politics and liberty, less so on curing depression IMHO.
• just-juan-post 6y ago
  Joe and the Democrats will continue to use fear of the virus as a weapon against the American people from now until 2024. Joe Biden, Kamala Harris Got a Big Social Media Boost from Indian Troll Farms https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-kamala-harris-got-big-social-media-boost-indian-troll-farms-1544047 https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-kamala-harris-got-big-soc...
• butbutemails2 6y ago
  It’s very easy to be depressed when the government is trying to take your healthcare away[1] when you have a chronic condition that beats the shit out of you and there is no research on how to fix it [1] why are they trying to take it away? Because it has the word “Obama” in it, even though they put that word in there
• josephcsible 6y ago
  There's one control group that I wish they had used but I didn't see: people who were exposed to Covid-19 and had to do a full quarantine for 2 weeks, but then later turned out to never have been infected. Without a comparison to this group, any negative mental effects could just as easily be caused by the quarantine rather than by the virus yourself.
• nickthemagicman 6y ago
  Everything from Covid Toes to GI issue to the lungs to the Brain to mental conditions. Is there anything that Coronavirus doesn't do?
• rossdavidh 6y ago
  Hmmm...this is interesting and all, but, shouldn't we have seen something to this affect in, say, northern Italy by now? Moreover, if this does pan out, it seems at least as likely that being in the midst of a full-on media avalanche of stories that "if you get X you're screwed for life", when you've gotten X, is depressing and anxiety-producing. The unusual thing would be that 4 out of 5 people don't.
• ryanmarsh 6y ago
  This is purely anecdotal but my 70+ y/o father began showing signs of memory loss and (what we presume to be) early signs of dementia following his COVID recovery which was less than 90 days ago. His pre and post COVID mental health change is obvious enough that everyone in the family noticed. He was not hospitalized during his recovery. He spent roughly two weeks at home feeling run-down with a mild cough that cleared up quickly. His sense of smell is still returning.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• sieabahlpark 6y ago
  Going to go out on a limb and ask whether it could be possible that the drastic change in way of life could have the same symptoms? Like one day you think you're gonna go outside to the movies and the next you're so afraid for your life that if you go outside you will die from an invisible killer. I'm sure there are plenty of people who are struggling to deal with a locked down reality, similar to prison. Regardless of your belief this probably isn't a symptom of covid and more the fear of reality.
• DoreenMichele 6y ago
  The study also found that people with a pre-existing mental illness were 65% more likely to be diagnosed with COVID-19 than those without. This suggests it's more complicated than "Covid causes mental illness." It points to the idea that mental illness is associated with poor health generally. I will also note that there is a global pandemic on and people are generally suffering from "cabin fever" from the lock down. So I, personally, wouldn't put too much stock in the idea that the disease per se causes mental illness. More like: "Being very ill during lock down with something known to kill people causes some people anxiety, depression and insomnia." Shock of shockers. (They do note that in the article, tbf: “This is likely due to a combination of the psychological stressors associated with this particular pandemic and the physical effects of the illness,” said Michael Bloomfield, a consultant psychiatrist at University College London.) Edit: I will further add this is a good time to reach out via internet to get some of your social needs met. I've noticed substantial growth in some Reddit communities this year, like r/UrbanPlanning (currently 105k, was like 80k not hugely long ago). Please seek out things that are sanity-promoting and not freak-out promoting if you are really struggling with the psychological fallout from this whole thing.
  • rsync 6y ago
    These are very good points and your observations and comments are well put. Thank you!
  • orblivion 6y ago
    > mental illness is associated with poor health generally Or maybe anxiety leads to people taking more tests.
• jb775 6y ago
  This is BS irresponsible clickbait. They're diagnosing more dementia cases because most covid patients are very old. They're diagnosing more cases of anxiety and depression because everyone around them is saying they should feel anxious and depressed because of covid. A placebo pill would probably do the trick here (for the latter).
• grammarnazzzi 6y ago
  Reuters didn't even site the study. :( GOD WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO JOURNALISM? Nowhere in the article is there any attempt to define "mental illness" or validate the rigorousness of the study. Without any objective data or methodology, it's impossible to determine if the study also includes normal and expected outcomes of any hardship like: * What percentage of the "1-in-5" patients already had contributing factors to the mental illness diagnoses before contracting COVID? * What percentage of the "1-in-5" patients were diagnosed with "depression" which is a normal and temporary part of the grieving process experienced by otherwise mentally healthy people experiencing hardship? I'm not trying to minimize or invalidate the situation of anyone suffering from the effects of COVID. I would just like to have a better understanding of the actual risk of interacting with people on a day-to-day basis. The title of this article suggests I have 20% chance of mental illness after being exposed to the virus. Having read the article, I now understand that I have a 0.0000000001% to 20% chance of such an outcome. I feel I've learned nothing, and I regret wasting my time reading it.
• coldtea 6y ago
  (a) it doesn't quantify what level of impact these diagnosis talk of ("anxiety" can be very mild), (b) doesn't qualify what kind of "survivor" we're talking about. Are people that were force-fed tubes to breath counted, or are people who just got it light and had just mild symptoms counted? (c) "The study also found that people with a pre-existing mental illness were 65% more likely to be diagnosed with COVID-19 than those without" - was this properly accounted for in the results?
• MR4D 6y ago
  Given the distorted impact this virus has based on age, is really love to see the results of this study broken out by age as well. Until then, we can’t know if this affects all people the same, or there is an age slant to this. COVID is a weird disease, and while this headline is troubling, my gut feeling is that the mental impacts hit people differently depending on age.