CNN
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You may have up to a 50% higher risk of developing long Covid-19 if you suffer from common psychiatric issues such as anxiety or depression, a recent study found.
Signs of the malady can include breathing problems, brain fog, chronic coughing, changes in taste and smell, overwhelming fatigue, difficulties in performing daily life functions, and disruptions in sleep that can last months, even years, after the infection has cleared the body.
People who self-identified as having anxiety, depression or loneliness, or who felt extremely stressed or worried frequently about the coronavirus were more likely to experience long Covid-19, according to the study published this month in JAMA Psychiatry.
“We found participants with two or more types of psychological distress before infection had a 50% higher risk of getting long Covid,” said study coauthor Dr. Siwen Wang, a research fellow in the department of nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston.
About 40 million adults over 18 in the United States live with an anxiety disorder, while over 21 million have suffered from major depression, according to national statistics. Many mental health conditions often overlap, with concurrent diagnoses, experts say. More than a fifth of adults in the US (22%) and the UK (23%) say they often or always feel lonely, a Kaiser Family Foundation study said.
“Having higher levels of psychological distress prior to a Covid infection also increased the risk of getting long Covid by 50%,” Wang said. “Those people also reported more symptoms seen in long Covid.”
It’s possible that some could use the study’s findings to support a hypothesis that post-Covid illness is psychosomatic, a prevalent belief in the early days of the pandemic, said Dr. Wesley Ely, a professor of medicine and critical care at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. He was not involved in the study.
Instead, the study’s message should be that people with existing psychological distress are closer to the “disaster” of long Covid, said Ely, codirector of Vanderbilt’s Critical Illness, Brain Dysfunction and Survivorship Center.
“Imagine 10 people are running a race, and you give five people a head start,” Ely said. “Those are the people who already had a mental health issue – they are just closer to the unfortunate finish line of getting long Covid.”
The idea that mental distress can affect the body in negative ways isn’t new. It’s also a two-way lane: Having a chronic illness is strongly associated with the development of depression and other psychological disorders.
With common noninfectious disorders such as heart disease, “depression/anxiety/emotional distress do appear to play a role,” said Dr. Joseph Bienvenu, a professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, in an email. He was not involved in the study.
People with major depression can develop blood pressure issues and may be more likely to have a heart attack. Chronic depression, stress and anxiety have been linked to insomnia, and a lack of quality sleep is a major culprit in the development of obesity, type 2 diabetes and other disorders.
And psychological distress has been shown to weaken the immune system, said study coauthor Dr. Angela Roberts, an associate professor of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Stanford University in California.
“Your brain and your immune system are very tightly interconnected,” Roberts said. “Studies have shown when you’re depressed or anxious, your immune system doesn’t work as well against targets like viruses and bacteria.”
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