Since the start of the epidemic, a few rare cases of extreme psychotic reactions have been identified around the world. The majority of patients had contracted a mild form of covid-19 and had no history of mental illness.
Psychotic events reported around the world
Persistent fatigue, loss of taste and smell, lung damage… So many after-effects that covid is likely to leave in its path. According to an article in the New York Times published on December 28 and spotted by our colleagues from marieclaire, rare cases of extreme psychotic reactions have been observed in patients around the world. Most of them had never had a mental disorder before. The New York Times states that the psychotic events reported were not directly related to the severity of the symptoms, most of them not having developed a severe form of the disease. Yet their psychotic episodes were impressive. The average age was between thirty and fifty years. If the doctors want to be rather reassuring by explaining that this psychiatric disorder remains relatively rare, these cases however make it possible to assess the impact of Covid-19 on the brain and mental health.
Very severe cases of psychosis
The New York Times describes in particular the following case: “A 36-year-old worker at a nursing home in North Carolina became so paranoid that she believed that her three children would be kidnapped and, in order to save them, she tried to get them to pass through the passage window of a fast food restaurant ”. Or: “a 30-year-old construction worker living in New York became so delusional that he imagined his cousin was going to murder him and, to protect himself, he tried to strangle him in bed. “. Dr. Goueli was not sure whether these reactions were linked to the Covid-19 infection, but added, “we have seen a second case, a third case and a fourth case, and we said to ourselves that it is something was happening ”. All the stake remains to determine it is the Covid-19 which caused a psychosis or if there were genetic predispositions in these patients.
