What's known as long COVID can take a physical toll well after the initial virus has passed, but the medical community has also acknowledged an impact on mental health.
KERA's Sam Baker talks about long COVID depression with Dr. Matthew Meece, a family medicine physician with Baylor Scott and White Health in Temple.
Dr. Meece: All viruses can attack different elements of the body in different systems. And one of those systems is the neurologic system.
Just under about 30% of some patients, particularly of patients who developed COVID from the initial strains, have this syndrome of fatigue, brain fog, dizziness, that we can't really identify with blood work tests and imaging tests, but they still have symptoms.
And the medical community agrees that we need to definitely address these symptoms and make sure that patients are taken care of. And we've come to the conclusion that this is kind of the best way we call it long COVID. These symptoms often have depressive-like symptoms, but they're not classic or what we call major depression either. So this is the term that we agreed upon as a medical community.
Baker: What separates depression from long COVID depression?
Dr. Meece: Many times that major depression is multiple other little events that have occurred over time, but it's not like one single event.
Most of the patients that we classify as long COVID depression, their symptoms were directly related to a severe or mild to moderate severity COVID illness, whether it be hospitalization or non-hospitalization that just had lingering symptoms and had a lot of outpatient follow-up visits. And we can directly link that within three to six months from that time frame the patient never returned back to their baseline.
Baker: So what would be signs or symptoms of long COVID depression?
Dr. Meece: One of the biggest things we were seeing was what patients would describe as brain fog. They have these cognitive symptoms that we really can't classify into other cognitive disorders.
We also would see these physical symptoms where it would be headache, some stomach symptoms like nausea or just don't wanna eat as much, their appetite goes away.
We see a lot of isolation because they feel like I just don't feel good enough so I'm just not going to go, I'm not going to be socially engaged.
And each of these things are classic findings we saw in depression patients, but we knew that COVID was like a one event and then the symptoms all started after they recovered from the acute illness.
Baker: Maybe treatment is not the word, but how do you help people cope with long COVID depression?
Dr. Meece: Well, the main thing I wanted to make sure people know is that please, if you don't have a primary care doctor, they need to have a doctor relationship.
And it's so important to make sure your doctor is hearing you, they're listening to your concerns, and making sure you're getting referrals to help when you need help. We know that when it comes to mental health, the sooner we can resolve mental health issues, the faster people can get back to recovery.
Baker: What then happens? What steps are taken to help them cope with long COVID depression?
Dr. Meece: We definitely want to make sure that we're talking about their lifestyle. What does your diet look like? You know, how can we improve your dietary habits? Because we do see when people are not feeling so well, they tend to eat foods that are not super great.
And then they're not doing any physical activity. And we know exercise has significant impacts on mental health.
We also want people to give themselves a little bit of grace, understanding that this is a disease that can come back and forth where you're making strides and then you may have a setback and that's okay. Setbacks don't mean failure. Setbacks are just part of the course that kind of goes up and down at times.
Lastly, sometimes there may be other mental things that require more than what a doctor can do. And that's why we want to get people into therapy. Having an open communication and talking through what's going on with their day-to-day symptoms and how we can get out of those negative feedback loops in our mind that gives into those negative behaviors that directly impact our health.
RESOURCES:
The long-term effects of COVID: Do you have COVID depression?
Depression and Anxiety in Long COVID: Why Interdisciplinary Treatment Is Needed
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