(Newser)
– An Illinois family speaks after a husband and father of two children took their own lives, saying they did it as a result of “COVID psychosis”. Ben Price of Morris committed suicide 16 days after being diagnosed with COVID-19 in February. The 48-year-old farmer and the married father of the two spent four days in the hospital with breathing problems, then came home with another person, widow Jennifer Price tells WGN. “He would walk through the house and repeat things. And he wasn’t even in his normal tone of voice,” she says. “He kept saying, ‘I’m sorry, I’m so scared.’ He stared out the window and worried only about things that weren’t even happening. “He was prescribed medication to calm him down, but he died by suicide shortly after.” Our Ben would never have left us, “says Price. But” he was not our Ben. ”
Doctors have described rare cases of psychosis after COVID-19. “Indeed, it appears that COVID-19 may have a two-way relationship with mental illness, whereby suffering from mental illness increases the risk of developing COVID-19, but also COVID-19 infection increases the risk of subsequent mental illness.” is shown in a magazine published last month in Advances in neurology and psychiatry. It refers to a study that found that 18% of 62,354 patients had a psychiatric diagnosis – with 5.8% representing a first diagnosis – within 90 days of being diagnosed with COVID-19. But “the kind of neurological and cognitive problems and even emotional and psychiatric problems as part of a Covid infection” are not fully understood, infectious disease expert Emily Landon tells WGN. Until they are, Price wants the families to be on guard. (More on neurological symptoms here.)