Psychological consequences of long COVID: comparing trajectories of depressive and anxiety symptoms... 2022 Fancourt et al

Full title: Psychological consequences of long COVID: comparing trajectories of depressive and anxiety symptoms before and after contracting SARS-CoV-2 between matched long- and short-COVID groups

Abstract

Background
There is a growing global awareness of the psychological consequences of long COVID, supported by emerging empirical evidence. However, the emergence and long-term trajectories of psychological symptoms following the infection are still unclear.

Aims
To examine when psychological symptoms first emerge following infection with SARS-CoV-2 and the long-term trajectories of psychological symptoms comparing long- and short-COVID groups.

Method
We analysed longitudinal data from the UCL COVID-19 Social Study (March 2020 to November 2021). We included data from adults living in England who reported contracting SARS-CoV-2 by November 2021 (n = 3115). Of these, 15.9% reported having had long COVID (n = 495). They were matched to participants who had short COVID using propensity score matching on a variety of demographic, socioeconomic and health covariates (n = 962 individuals with 13 325 observations) and data were further analysed using growth curve modelling.

Results
Depressive and anxiety symptoms increased immediately following the onset of infection in both long- and short-COVID groups. But the long-COVID group had substantially greater initial increases in depressive symptoms and heightened levels over 22 months follow-up. Initial increases in anxiety were not significantly different between groups, but only the short-COVID group experienced an improvement in anxiety over follow-up, leading to widening differences between groups.

Conclusions
The findings support work on the psychobiological pathways involved in the development of psychological symptoms relating to long COVID. The results highlight the need for monitoring of mental health and provision of adequate support to be interwoven with diagnosis and treatment of the physical consequences of long COVID.

Open access, https://www.cambridge.org/core/jour...covid-groups/923140B3F95F1158C0CDC188002531AE

 

It's almost like for all intents and purposes that, in the context of illness, depression and anxiety can simply be substituted for illness. Especially as they pretty much literally ask about common symptoms of illness, as a result of having labeled illness as depression or anxiety for decades.

What this says is that the common concepts of depression and anxiety in a medical setting need to be rethought entirely, as symptoms of illness, instead of the generic wishy-washy stuff about thoughts and beliefs. The obsessive need to make this entirely independent of the circumstances of illness is absurd.

This is the obvious common sense explanation. But instead it's the usual dragons and fairies stuff. As usual.