Research reveals cases of severe coronavirus-related psychosis.
A Los Angeles patient caring for COVID-19 also developed a severe mental disorder.
“We currently have a patient who is being treated for COVID. And while he is being treated for COVID, he has psychosis and has come up with beliefs that are totally abnormally bizarre,” said Dr. Steven Siegel, a psychiatrist at USC Keck Medicine.
Siegel explained that people with psychosis experience thoughts and emotions so affected that they lose touch with reality.
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“People think the police are after them or their families are trying to hurt them,” he said.
Individual reports of coronavirus-related psychosis have been documented in medical journals. Some experts suspect that the cause could be the response of the body’s immune system or inflammation caused by the disease.
Dr. Charles Casassa is a neurologist at Loma Linda University of Health.
“We see symptoms that are related to inflammation of the brain, which can include confusion and rarely psychosis,” he said.
Casassa is studying the effects of COVID-19 on patients with epilepsy and has found that the virus can cause more seizures.
“We also found that there are some patients who do not have a history of seizures before they can later have seizures once infected with COVID,” he said.
Research into how COVID-19 affects the brain is still in its early days. How long psychosis episodes can last and who is vulnerable are all questions that need to be answered. However, Siegel says people need to keep in mind that the condition is very rare.
“This is much more extreme. An extreme rarity than something I think people should spend their energy worrying about,” Siegel said. “It’s not likely to happen.”
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