Can corona cause psychosis?

Covid-19 can have effects on the brain, you just don’t know how to do it. In rare cases, mental illnesses have been documented.

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Hallucinations, delirium-like states or psychoses after a corona infection: Researchers have been observing this phenomenon after Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic. As early as 2020, a man from England believed from one day to the next that he could talk to his dead relatives. And that one day after he had a corona test positive. The patient was suddenly convinced that rebirth was imminent, even though he had no previous mental illness. This was reported by a medical journal in April 2021. The young man struggled with psychosis for more than a month: during that time he broke a door, pushed his mother, believing that an experiment with radioactive radiation was being carried out on him.

The doctors could not clearly establish what triggered the short-term psychosis in him. The virus could have caused anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, an autoimmune reaction that causes encephalitis. In a healthy brain, the so-called “blood-brain barrier” protects the cerebrum from the immune system. According to Benedict Michael, a neurologist at the University of Liverpool who keeps a register of neurological complications following a corona infection, a corona infection could open the barrier,

The effect on the brain is still unknown

In any case, the well-known odor disorders also indicate a connection with the brain. “This is because the so-called olfactory bulb (olfactory bulb) is an extension of the brain,” says Andreas Cérny, a virologist from Lugano. In the study by Solomon et al. was found in 18 people who died of Covid-19 but no signs of inflammation of the brain (encephalitis) or meninges (meningitis). All of them showed damage to the brain caused by a lack of oxygen, Cérny said.

“It is unclear whether and how the Sars-Cov-2 infection is related to psychoses. Is the serious illness the trigger? Is it the stress? Is it medication or a lack of oxygen? ”Asks Cérny. In the area that he can overlook in Ticino and what colleagues describe, he does not have the impression that psychoses occur more frequently with Covid-19. Media spokesman Christian Salzmann also says at the Swiss association “Long Covid”: “We have no victims in the association who have complained of psychosis.”

Post-illness psychiatric symptoms

There are few documented psychoses in connection with Corona worldwide. In the medical journal “The Lancet Psychiatry”, Benedict Michael and his research team summarized complications in connection with Covid-19 disease in the summer of 2020: 39 of 125 patients with severe illnesses showed psychiatric abnormalities, including psychoses (10 people) and dementia-like ones Disorders (6). Age did not play a decisive role; younger patients also suffered from the symptoms.

Another group led by neurologist Michael Zandi from University College London Hospital has published data on 40 Covid sufferers who have suffered from meningitis, delirium, nerve damage and strokes in the journal “Brain”. Zandi fears that some corona sufferers could suffer subtle brain damage that will only become noticeable in the years to come. There are parallels to a brain disease, encephalitis lethargica (sleeping sickness), which occurred after the Spanish flu in 1918. This would have to be checked.