Prolonged COVID's connection with rising suicide: scientists warn of hidden crisis

Scott Taylor never got to move on from COVID-19. The 56-year-old contracted the illness in the spring of 2020, and it wasn't until nearly 18 months later—after he had already lost his health, his memory, and his money—that he began to show signs of recovery. In her final text message to a friend, Taylor lamented the fate of the millions of people who suffer from protracted COVID, a crippling condition that can persist for months or years after the initial infection. "Without being completely worn out, fatigued, and in excruciating pain all the way down my back, I can hardly do laundry. dizziness, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhoea. It appears that I speak without understanding what I'm saying "Taylor added. According to the World Health Organization, long COVID is a complex medical condition that can be challenging to diagnose because it has a variety of more than 200 symptoms, some of which can be confused with other illnesses. These symptoms range from fatigue and cognitive impairment to pain, fever, and heart palpitations. The frequency of suicides among patients is not well-documented. Following evidence of an increase in depression and suicidal thoughts among individuals with long COVID as well as a rising number of known deaths, several scientists from institutions including the U.S. National Institutes of Health and Britain's data-collection agency are starting to investigate a potential link. "I'm sure long COVID is associated with suicidal thoughts, with suicide attempts, with suicide plans and the risk of suicide death. 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 behavior. Do patients' chances of committing suicide possibly rise as a result of the virus-altering brain biology? is one of the important issues researchers are currently examining. Or do people approach the edge because they are unable to operate as they previously could, as might happen with other chronic health conditions? Sher claimed that inflammation in the brain, which multiple studies have linked with lengthy COVID, was also a very powerful predictor of suicide, as were pain disorders in general. He continued, "We ought to take this seriously.