A study published by The BMJ today finds that COVID-19 is associated with an increased risk of mental health disorders, including anxiety, depression, substance use, and sleep disorders, up to one year after initial infection.
The findings suggest that tackling mental health disorders among survivors of COVID-19 should be a priority.
Some studies have suggested that people with COVID-19 might be at increased risk of anxiety and depression, but they included only a small selection of mental health outcomes and tracked patients over a maximum of six months.
A comprehensive assessment of the mental health manifestations in people with COVID-19 at one year has not yet been undertaken.
To address this, researchers used data from the US Department of Veterans Affairs national healthcare databases to estimate the risks of mental health outcomes in people who survived at least 30 days after a positive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test result between March 2020 and January 2021.
They identified data for 153,848 individuals and matched them to two control groups without COVID-19: 5,637,840 contemporary controls and 5,859,251 historical controls who predated the pandemic.
Participants were mostly white men with an average age of 63 years.
The COVID-19 group was further divided into those who were or were not admitted to hospital during the acute phase of infection, and information was collected on potentially influential factors including age, race, sex, lifestyle, and medical history.
The researchers then followed all three groups for one year to estimate the risks of a set of prespecified mental health outcomes, including anxiety, depression and stress disorders, substance use disorders, neurocognitive decline, and sleep disorders.
Compared with the non-infected control group, 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).
When the researchers examined mental health disorders separately, they 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 4 per 1,000 with any (non-opioid) substance use disorders.