Among the array of strange and unexpected symptoms of COVID-19, a small but significant number of people are developing severe psychotic symptoms – from wild delusions to vivid hallucinations – after falling sick with the disease. Psychosis and pandemics have been linked before, nevertheless, researchers are struggling to understand why these peculiar symptoms are a feature of the ongoing disease outbreak.
While the precise scale of the problem is not yet clear, a number of studies across the world have investigated the issue over the past year.
One study, published in November, found that nearly 1 in 5 people diagnosed with COVID-19 receive a psychiatric diagnosis within the next 3 months. Shockingly, 1 in 4 of these people also had no previous history of mental health concerns before their infection. Most of these diagnoses were most often related to anxiety, depression, or insomnia – but over 1,200 of the patients were diagnosed with psychotic disorders. Another study