Research is uncovering cases of severe psychosis linked to the coronavirus.
A patient in Los Angeles who received care for COVID-19 also developed a serious mental illness.
“We currently have a patient being treated for COVID. And while he is being treated for COVID, he has psychosis and has come forward with beliefs that are totally bizarrely abnormal,” said Keck Medicine of USC psychiatrist Dr. Steven Siegel.
Siegel explained that people with psychosis experience their thoughts and emotions so weakened that they lose touch with reality.
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“People think the police are after them or that their families want to hurt them,” he said.
Individual reports of coronavirus-related psychosis have been documented in medical journals. Some experts suspect that the cause may be the immune system response or the inflammation caused by the disease.
Dr. Charles Casassa is a neurologist at Loma Linda University Health.
“We see symptoms related to encephalitis, including confusion and rarely psychosis,” he said.
Casassa is studying the effects of COVID-19 on patients with epilepsy and found that the virus can cause more seizures.
“We have also found that some patients have no history of seizures, which can then have seizures after being infected with COVID,” he said.
Research into the influence of COVID-19 on the brain is still in its infancy. How long the psychosis episodes can last and who is vulnerable are all questions that need to be answered. However, Siegel says people should keep in mind that the condition is very rare.
“This is much more extreme. An extreme rarity than it is something I think people have to put their energy into,” Siegel said. “It probably won’t happen.”
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