Covid-19 does have an impact on mental health. A recent study reveals the link between severe forms of this infection and the risk of developing schizophrenia.
- In France, 600,000 people suffer from schizophrenia.
- Usually, schizophrenia manifests during adolescence, between the ages of 15 and 25.
- It is manifested by various symptoms: withdrawal or social isolation, cognitive difficulties, hallucinations, delusions, etc.
As of October 16, more than 7,000 people had been hospitalized with Covid-19 over the past seven days, according to Public Health France. Among them, 588 had been admitted to critical care. According to a new study published in the journal Psychiatry Research, these patients are more at risk of suffering from schizophrenia. Indeed, researchers have established a link between this mental illness and the severe forms of Covid-19 for which there has been hospitalization.
Previous research, published in November 2021 in the journal The Journal of Clinical Psychiatryhad already proven that Covid-19 could affect the central nervous system and have neuropsychiatric manifestations. According to these researchers, four months after hospitalization for Covid-19, more than 20% of patients had at least one psychiatric disorder.
11% increased risk of schizophrenia after a severe form of Covid-19
Other works, published in the journal Asian Journal of Psychiatry in June 2022, showed that Covid-19 had an impact on the brain and mental health of infected people. Scientists had also observed that schizophrenic patients were more likely to die after contracting the coronavirus.
The novelty in the study which has just been published in the journal Psychiatry Research is to have quantified the risk of suffering from schizophrenia after a severe Covid-19 infection. More specifically, in the event of hospitalization, patients are 11% more likely to suffer from schizophrenia.
Covid-19: no link between a simple infection and schizophrenia
To achieve this result, the team of scientists analyzed the data of 122,616 people infected with Covid-19, 32,519 patients who were hospitalized for this reason as well as control cases. “We found hospitalization for Covid-19 impacted schizophreniaexplain the researchers. However, SARS-CoV-2 infection has no causal link with this psychiatric condition..
The scientists note some limitations to their findings. The first is that they only studied the genetic link between these two diseases – Covid-19 and schizophrenia – without including environmental variables. In addition, all of the patients whose data were analyzed were Europeans. Nevertheless, they believe that schizophrenia should be part of the list of sequelae of a severe form of Covid-19 and therefore be the subject of screening tests before discharge from hospital and during the following months.