The New York Times reports that multiple
doctors have observed the symptoms in recovered patients who had no previously
recorded history of mental illness.
Studies in the U.K. and Spain have found
that a small number of hospitalized coronavirus patients developed “new-onset
psychosis,” the Times notes, with similar anecdotal reports coming in from
America’s Midwest.
The Times did not speak to any patients who
had experienced psychiatric symptoms, but some physicians were given permission
by their patients to describe their cases.
A 42-year-old mother in New York described
continually seeing her children being murdered and said she heard voices
telling her to kill her children and herself.
In New York City, a 30-year-old man tried
to strangle his cousin after becoming convinced they were planning on murdering
him.
A 49-year-old man described hearing voices
and believed himself to be the devil.
The physician treating the 42-year-old
mother, Hisam Goueli, told the Times the cases were unique due to the patients’
self-awareness of their mental health decline.
“People with psychosis don’t have an
insight that they’ve lost touch with reality,” Goueli said.
Goueli also noted it was unusual that most
of these patients were in their 30s and 40s. According to the physician, the
symptoms that patients described were more often attributed to schizophrenia in
younger people or dementia in the elderly.
Experts have stated that viral effects on
the brain may be attributable to the immune system’s response or even the
physical symptoms that patients experience.
“Some of the neurotoxins that are reactions
to immune activation can go to the brain, through the blood-brain barrier, and
can induce this damage,” said Vilma Gabbay, co-director at the Psychiatry
Research Institute at Montefiore Einstein (PRIME).
Experts who spoke to the Times concurred
with Gabbay’s assessment, saying a continued immune response after a patient
has recovered could impact the brain, though the symptoms may be dependent on
which region of the brain is affected.
Robert Yolken, a neurovirology professor at
Johns Hopkins University, told the Times, “Some people have neurological
symptoms, some people psychiatric and many people have a combination.”
The Times notes that similar cases were
observed in past viruses such as the 1918 Spanish flu, SARS and MERS. Though
the mechanism through which these symptoms are brought on is not well
understood, experts told the Times that studying these patients could help
better understand psychosis.
The duration in which patients suffer from psychiatric symptoms is not certain. One patient described in the Times piece recovered within 40 days while another was reportedly still struggling with psychotic symptoms more than two months after being hospitalized.
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