By Julie Steenhuysen and Jennifer Rigby
CHICAGO/LONDON (Reuters) – Scott Taylor has never been out of COVID-19.
The 56-year-old, who contracted the disease in the spring of 2020, had yet to recover about 18 months later when he committed suicide at his home near Dallas, having lost his health, memory and money.
“No one is interested in that. No one needs to take the time to listen,” Taylor wrote in a final text message to a friend, talking about the plight of millions of other people suffering from prolonged COVID, a crippling condition that can last for months and years after the initial infection.
“I can wash my clothes a little bit without total exhaustion, pain, fatigue, pain along my spine. The world is dizzying, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea. It turns out I’m saying things and I have no idea what I’m saying,” Taylor added.
Long COVID is a complex medical condition that can be difficult to diagnose because it has a diversity of more than two hundred symptoms, some of which would possibly resemble other diseases, from exhaustion and cognitive decline to pain, fever and central palpitations, according to the World Health Organization.
There is no reliable knowledge about the frequency of suicides among patients. Several scientists from organizations such as the U. S. National Institutes of Health. The U. S. food and drug firm and the U. K. knowledge-gathering firm are beginning to investigate a possible link behind evidence of a buildup in cases of depression and suicidal tendencies. Mind among other people with COVID for a long time, as well as a growing number of known deaths.
“I am sure that the long duration of COVID is related to suicidal thoughts, suicide attempts, suicidal plans and the threat of death by suicide. We just don’t have epidemiological data,” said Leo Sher, a psychiatrist at Mount Sinai Health System in New York, who studies mood disorders and suicidal behaviors.
Among the key questions being tested lately through researchers: Does the threat of suicide potentially accumulate in patients because the virus alters brain biology?Or is the loss of their ability to serve as they used to push other people to the brink, just like with other long-term fitness issues?
Sher said pain disorders in general greatly predict suicide, as does inflammation in the brain, which several studies have linked to prolonged COVID.
“We take this seriously,” he added.
Research for Reuters conducted through Seattle-based fitness know-how firm Truveta showed that patients with prolonged COVID were nearly twice as likely to get a first prescription for an antidepressant within 90 days of their initial COVID diagnosis than other people diagnosed with COVID. alone.
The research was based on knowledge from 20 U. S. primary hospital systems. In the U. S. , it added more than 1. 3 million adults diagnosed with COVID and 19,000 with a prolonged diagnosis of COVID between May 2020 and July 2022.
“WE DON’T KNOW THE MEASURE”
The potential long-term effects of COVID-19 are poorly understood, and governments and scientists are now beginning to systematically examine the region as they emerge from a pandemic that has blinded much of the world.
While many long-term COVID patients recover over time, about 15% still show symptoms after 12 months, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. No remedy is shown and debilitating symptoms can save you from working.
The implications of prolonged COVID potentially linked to an increased threat of intellectual illness and suicide are serious; In the United States alone, the disease has affected up to 23 million people, the U. S. Government Accountability Office estimated. USA in March.
Long COVID has also put about 4. 5 million people out of work, or about 2. 4 percent of the U. S. workforce. In the U. S. , employment expert Katie Bach of the Brookings Institution told Congress in July.
Worldwide, an estimated 150 million people developed prolonged COVID in the first two years of the pandemic, according to IHME.
In many emerging countries, the long-standing lack of COVID surveillance makes the picture even murkier, said Murad Khan, a professor of psychiatry at Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan, who belongs to a foreign organization of experts investigating COVID-related illnesses. risk of suicide. -19.
“We have a huge problem, but we don’t know the magnitude of the problem,” he said.
REACHING THE BREAKING POINT
Time is a scarce commodity for a growing number of other people who have long suffered from COVID and who say they lack hope and money, according to Reuters interviews with dozens of patients, family members and experts in the disease.
For Taylor, who lost her task of promoting genomic testing to doctors in a series of layoffs in the summer of 2020, the tipping point came when her insurance policy through her former employer was about to expire and her application for Social Security benefits was denied, her circle of relatives says.
“This is the straw that broke the camel’s back,” his older brother, Mark Taylor.
Heidi Ferrer, a 50-year-old Kansas television station, committed suicide in May 2021 to escape the tremors and excruciating pain that prevented her from walking or sleeping after contracting COVID more than a year earlier, her husband Nick Guthe said.
Guthe, a filmmaker who has an advocate for covid patients prolonged since his wife’s death, said that until last winter he hadn’t heard of any other suicides within the network of prolonged COVID patients.
“Now come each and every week,” he added.
Survivor Corps, a longtime COVID patient advocacy group, said it surveyed its members in May and found that 44% of nearly two hundred respondents said they had committed suicide.
Lauren Nichols, a board member of the long-running COVID relief organization Body Politic, said that when communicating with members of the family circle on social media, she was aware of more than 50 other people with long-term COVID who had committed suicide, Reuters was not able to independently verify cases.
Nichols, 34, a logistics expert for the U. S. Department of Transportation. She says she has continuously committed suicide herself due to a long COVID, which she has been suffering from for more than two years.
Exit International advises English speakers on how to apply for assistance in dying in Switzerland, where euthanasia is a legal issue subject to safe controls. Fiona Stewart, director, said the organization, which does not track the effects after offering advice, has won several dozen applications. of long COVID patients the pandemic and now receives about one per week.
LONG COVID AND OMICRON
The U. S. National Institutes of Health U. S. agencies are tracking the effects of intellectual fitness as a component of their $470 million RECOVER program over the long period of COVID. Katz.
“What we do know is that other people with chronic illnesses are more likely to have suicidal thoughts, suicide attempts and voluntary suicide,” said Richard Gallagher, an associate professor of child psychiatry at NYU Langone Health, which is part of RECOVER.
On the question of whether the virus alters the brain, Gallagher said there is evidence that COVID can cause brain inflammation, which has been linked to suicide and depression, even in other people with a mild illness.
“Possibly there would be direct poisonous effects, in some way, of the virus, and its component will be inflammation,” he said.
Prolonged COVID reduces overall fitness by an average of 21%, right to general deafness or traumatic brain injury, the University of Washington’s IHME found.
Although some experts expected Omicron to be less likely to cause prolonged COVID, official UK data released this month found that 34% of the 2 million prolonged COVID patients in the country developed their symptoms after an Omicron infection.
A UK government advisory organisation is reading the suicide threat for prolonged COVID patients compared to the general population, while the Office for National Statistics (ONS) is assessing whether it can assess in advance a prolonged COVID patient’s suicide threat as it does for other people with other illnesses, like cancer.
“Disabling long-term fitness situations can lead to a threat of suicide, hence the fear of prolonged COVID,” said Louis Appleby, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Manchester and an adviser to the UK government.
In fact, studies in Britain and Spain have found a six-fold increased threat of suicide in patients with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), postviral disease with symptoms similar to those of prolonged COVID, compared to the general population.
The UK’s network of long-term COVID treatment centres also has a glut of applications, increasing the sense of hopelessness for some; in June, the last month on record, only one-third of patients won an appointment within six weeks of referral through their local doctor, and another third had to wait more than 15 weeks.
Ruth Oshikanlu, a former midwife and fitness guest in London who became a pregnancy coach, said her long COVID fitness issues combined to push her to the limit. When his business temporarily closed due to debt problems after suffering to work, he felt his life was over.
“I cried to the accountant and the guy made me wait. I think he didn’t need to be the last user to communicate with me,” the 48-year-old recalls.
“What COVID gives you is a lot of time to think,” he said. “Fortunately, I didn’t think about finishing it for my son. But I know many other people who have had those suicidal thoughts.
(Reporting through Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago and Jennifer Rigthrough in London; Editing by Michele Gershberg and Pravin Char)
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