https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/13/...e_code=1.-Uw.f69R.Cc2ji1dVYOYM&smid=url-share Adults in their 20s, 30s and 40s are driving the trend. Researchers point to long Covid as a major cause
It could just be that Covid provides an excuse for claiming brainfog and poor memory. Before, people might have said "I'm having one of those days." Now it's probably trendy to say that it's brainfog, or that their memory is worse after Covid. The rise in mental health conditions is partly due to the invention of trendy names for conditions. Instead of being "a busy child", the child now has ADHD, OCD, autism, and a bunch of other labels. Do psychiatrists get paid per label applied? Here's a paper for someone to write: correlation between usage of disease/disorder labels in popular media and the rise in people reporting having those problems. Ah, I just had another quick look at that article and it did mention that possible connection.
I don’t think so @Creekside. Forgetfulness is normal most people aren’t especially worried by it. Forgot to buy milk oh well. Called someone the wrong name never mind. The dysfunction following Covid-19 infection can leave you unable to remember how to move your own arm, pronounce the numbers of your address and such like. This is understandably more disturbing and embarrassing than the average everyday forgetfulness experienced by most of us. Only some of us experience the symptoms but from the point of view of findings of material damage post Covid infection, it’s not looking good for the human brain more generally.
The story isn't about the number of people who develop severe cognitive problems following Covid; it's about the number of people complaining about "brainfog and forgetfullness". People follow trends, so if it's trendy to talk about food intolerances, the media will flood people with stories about intolerances, and people will talk to their friends and associates about their intolerances, even if they only have a mild dislike for a food. ADHD is not a newly-developed condition, but people didn't talk about it until it became trendy to do so (and the term was invented and became popular). If lots of people started talking about "brainfog and forgetfullness" due to Covid, that spurred the media to make that discussion popular, and people with normal cognition would likely join into discussions with "me too". Think of how ME has been dismissed by people who think that feeling normally tired (and recovering by resting a bit) allows them to understand how ME feels. I'm not arguing that Covid can't cause "brainfog and forgetfullness". I'm arguing that the article is about the popularity of complaining about "brainfog and forgetfullness". Brainfog is hard to quantify, but someone could do a proper quantitative study on short and long term memory among the general population, but it would be hard to prove an increase unless someone else had done that study long enough ago. So, it's hard to prove that there is an actual increase in cognitive problems. Counting complaints is easier, but doesn't necessarily mean anything about the actual thing being complained about.
