The longer the corona pandemic lasts, the more long-term effects of a coronavirus infection become known.
British researchers come to a disturbing thesis.
In the case of long-lasting symptoms after a coronavirus infection, doctors speak of Long Covid *.
Long-term symptoms include fatigue, attention and concentration problems, shortness of breath and depression.
British researchers from the University of Oxford have specifically looked at the long-term effects of Covid on the psyche.
Your study results paint a disturbing picture.
Coronaviruses can attack various body tissues and organs.
Depending on the area of the body, symptoms such as shortness of breath, skin changes and even hearing loss can occur.
As early as summer 2020 it became known that a coronavirus infection also attacks the brain.
A press release from the Barmherzige Brüder Hospital in Regensburg revealed that Covid-19 can result in symptoms such as confusion, disorientation, anxiety and even delusions -
we are
talking about the so-called
"Covid-19 brain"
.
British researchers have also dealt with the psychological effects of Covid-19 in a recent publication.
To do this, they compared the electronically transmitted health data of 236,379 corona patients with comparison groups who were sick with flu or respiratory infections.
In the study, which was published in advance but has yet to be checked, it says:
One in eight people who were infected with Covid-19 fell ill with a psychiatric or psychiatric test for the first time within six months of the positive corona test neurological disease
.
This number tripled when the researchers included patients with a pre-existing psychological or neurological condition.
In the video: More about Long Covid
Also read
: Long-term consequences: Corona patients complain of symptoms six months after the illness.
Psychosis after corona infection
The study by the Oxford researchers found that medical professionals diagnosed nervous disorders or mental illnesses in a full 33.6 percent of the corona cases analyzed six months after the diagnosis.
13 percent of people received such a diagnosis for the first time, according to the study published on the specialist portal medrxiv.
"Most of the diagnostic categories were more frequent after Covid-19 than after influenza or other respiratory infections, including
stroke
, bleeding in the skull or in the brain, dementia and psychotic disorders,
" write the researchers led by Dr.
Max Taquet from the Department of Psychiatry at Oxford University.
Depression was also diagnosed more frequently in Covid 19 patients.
This finding is supported by the US Institute Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which list depression as a symptom regularly observed in long-term corona patients.
Dr.
According to the British news platform Guardian, Tim Nicholson, psychiatrist and clinical lecturer at King's College Hospital, has concerns that Covid-19 can also
result in
psychosis as a psychiatric complication
.
What is a psychosis?
The collective term psychosis includes various psychological disorders that cause patients to lose touch with themselves and their environment.
There is a change in personality, which those affected usually do not notice themselves.
A distinction is made between organically conditioned and non-organically conditioned psychoses.
The former is caused by underlying diseases such as dementia or multiple sclerosis, the use of certain medications or drugs.
In the case of non-organic psychoses, a mental illness such as depression or schizophrenia usually precedes it, or stress as a result of childbirth.
According to the researchers, when and how long psychological complaints can occur after Covid-19 cannot be precisely determined.
Nor can their study be seen as proof that a coronavirus infection is responsible for the mental disorders observed.
It is possible that not all of the
psychological disorders
that have occurred so far have
been recorded
in the electronic data of the corona cases analyzed
.
(jg) * Merkur.de belongs to the Germany-wide Ippen-Digital editorial network
.
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