Covid: what mental health problems are likely to strike two years after recovery?

No, the crisis covid is not finished. All over the world, experts agree that we must learn to live with sickness. And that a new wave is preparing to surge from the start of the school year in September, the 8th in France.

More than two and a half years after the arrival of the coronavirus, it continues to reveal itself. Scientists are always learning more about what is now called the long covid. This form of the disease which lasts over time and whose symptoms are gradually identified.

In an article posted online this Thursday, August 18, the major American media CNN even claims that certain Covid symptoms can strike two years after a healing : problems of Mental Health. According to an Oxford University study of one million cases in eight different countries, “the risk of developing seizure disordersa brain foga dementia and other mental health issues remain high two years after recovering from Covid-19″. “The risks of common psychiatric disorders returned to baseline after 1–2 months (mood disorders at 43 days, anxiety disorders at 58 days) and then reached an overall incidence equal to that of the matched comparison group ( mood disorders at 457 days, anxiety disorders at 417 days).In contrast, the risks of cognitive impairment (known as brain fog), dementia, psychotic disorders, and epilepsy or seizures were further increased at the end of the 2-year follow-up period”specifies the study published in the online scientific journal The Lancet.

Read also :
Covid – 7th wave: what are the two symptoms of the BA.5 variant that strike upon waking, even after a night without night sweats?

The affected children

“Alarming findings, critically important in our current context of unmitigated Covid spread”says Rachel Sumner, senior researcher at Cardiff Metropolitan University in the UK, who was not involved in the study.

“They can’t think, they can’t breathe. I have a person whose illness is so bad that he can hardly get out of bed”testifies in this sense Professor Aaron Friedberg, of the University of Ohio. “I recently saw a person who is still not working due to Covid symptoms two years later.”

Disorders that can also strike children even if the proportion of children under 18 affected remains lower than in adults.

Conclusions valid for all variants, including Delta and Omicronwhich carry equivalent risks with respect to neurological and psychiatric risks.

However, this study has some limitations: “It is not known how severe or long lasting these disorders are. It is also not known when they started, as the problems may be present for some time before a diagnosis is made. Unrecorded cases of COVID-19 and unregistered vaccinations introduce some uncertainty into the results”.