Covid-19 is associated with an increased risk of mental health disorders, including anxiety, depression, substance use, and sleep disorders, up to a year after initial infection, a study suggests.
The findings, published in the British Medical Journal, suggest that tackling mental health disorders among survivors of Covid-19 should be a priority, said researchers.
“Tackling mental health disorders among survivors of Covid-19 should be a priority”
Study authors
They said that some studies had previously suggested that people with Covid-19 might be at increased risk of anxiety and depression.
However, the researchers cautioned that the earlier work included only a small selection of mental health outcomes and tracked patients over a maximum of six months.
As a result, they used US national data to estimate the risks of mental health outcomes in people who survived at least 30 days after a positive PCR test result between March 2020 and January 2021.
They looked at data on 153,848 individuals and matched them to two control groups without Covid-19 – 5,637,840 contemporary controls and 5,859,251 historical controls from before the pandemic.
The researchers followed them for one year to estimate the risk of outcomes, including anxiety, depression and stress disorders, substance use disorders, neurocognitive decline, and sleep disorders.
Compared with contemporary controls, people with Covid-19 showed a 60% higher risk of any mental health diagnosis or prescription at one year, equivalent to an additional 64 per 1,000 people.
They also found that Covid-19 was associated with an additional 24 per 1,000 people with sleep disorders at one year, 15 per 1,000 with depressive disorders, 11 per 1,000 with neurocognitive decline, and four per 1,000 with any substance use disorders.
Similar results were found when the Covid-19 group was compared with the historical control group, according to the researchers from Saint Louis in Missouri.
They said the risks were highest in people admitted to hospital during the acute phase of Covid-19, but were evident even among those who were not admitted to hospital.
People with covid-19 also showed higher risks of mental health disorders than people with seasonal influenza.
In addition, people admitted to hospital for Covid-19 showed increased risks of mental health disorders compared with those admitted to hospital for any other reason.
The study authors said: “The findings suggest that people who survive the acute phase of covid-19 are at increased risk of an array of incident mental health disorders.
“Tackling mental health disorders among survivors of Covid-19 should be a priority,” they said.
