A new study confirms that within a year of infection, a person is more likely to develop a variety of mental disorders, including anxiety, depression, and substance use. substances and sleep disorders.
About 20% of people who recover from COVID-19 experience various psychiatric and neurological complications, this is the so-called postcovid syndrome. The most common of these consequences are depression, anxiety and panic disorders, ischemic strokes, and even cerebral bleeding.
Christo van Meer 
expert
Psychotherapist, psychiatrist, psychologist 
Early studies suggested that coronavirus patients may be at increased risk for anxiety and depression. In these studies, the researchers followed the participants for a maximum of six months and did not look at other possible mental disorders. Until now, we have not had any long-term comprehensive assessment of this problem.
To conduct such a comprehensive assessment, American scientists used information from databases of the US Department of Veterans Affairs. They selected 153,848 people who survived at least 30 days after a positive PCR test for COVID-19 and compared their data with two control groups.
Read all about the symptoms and causes of depression in the Encyclopedia on the Medportal.
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The group of people infected with coronavirus was further divided into those who were hospitalized and those who were sick at home. In addition, the researchers collected information about potentially influencing factors such as age, race, gender, lifestyle, and medical history. The observations were made over the course of a year, from March 2020 to January 2021.
Scientists assessed the risks of mental health outcomes following coronavirus disease, including anxiety, depression, stress disorders, substance use disorders, decrease in neurocognitive functions and sleep disturbances.
According to the results of the work, people with COVID-19 had a 60% higher risk of any mental diagnosis during the year than participants in control groups. Experts stress that the findings suggest that addressing mental health issues among COVID-19 survivors should be a priority.
“We now have a clearer picture of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health ”, — said one of the authors of the study, Scott Weich.
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