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– A family from Illinois speaks out after a husband and father of two took his own life, saying he did so as a result of “COVID psychosis.” Morris’s Ben Price committed suicide 16 days after being diagnosed with COVID-19 in February. The 48-year-old farmer and married father of two spent four days in the hospital with respiratory problems and then came home like any other, widow Jennifer Price tells WGN. “He was just walking around the house and repeating things. And it wasn’t even in his normal tone,” she says. ‘He kept repeating,’ I’m sorry, I’m just so scared. He would stare out the window and just worry about things that weren’t even happening. He was prescribed medication to calm him down, but died of suicide shortly afterwards. “Our Ben would never have left us,” says Price. But “he wasn’t our Ben.”
Doctors have described rare cases of psychosis after COVID-19. “It does indeed appear that COVID-19 may have a bi-directional relationship with a mental illness, where experiencing a mental illness increases the risk of developing COVID-19, but COVID-19 infection also increases the risk of developing COVID-19. another mental illness, ”said a published review. last month Advances in Neurology and PsychiatryIt refers to one study that found that 18% of 62,354 patients had a psychiatric diagnosis – 5.8% of which represented an initial diagnosis – within 90 days of the COVID-19 diagnosis. But “the kinds of neurological and cognitive problems and even emotional and psychiatric problems that come as part of a Covid infection” are not fully understood, infectious disease expert Emily Landon tells WGN. Until they are, Price wants families to be wary. (More on neurological symptoms here.)