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Half of Covid survivors are facing depression

Half of Covid survivors are facing depression

Among the more than 3,900 people who had passed Covid-19, surveyed, between May 2020 and January 2021, 52% admitted to experiencing symptoms of depression and researchers through psychological sessions confirmed this fact with each subject.

"People who have been with COVID-19 may experience depressive symptoms for many months after being infected with the virus," said lead researcher Dr. Roy Perlis. He is a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and associate chief of research in the psychiatry department at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

Combining chronic stress during the pandemic and damaging people’s social relationships is a ready-made recipe for depression and anxiety, Perlis said.

"This observation reinforces the importance of understanding whether this is an effect of Covid-19 itself, or simply the pandemic stress plus an infection, causing anxiety and depression," Perlis added.

The researchers also found that those affected by depression were more likely to be young in age, male, and suffer from severe forms of Covid-19.

Early studies had found a link between depression and loss of smell and taste among patients with Covid-19, but Perlis and his colleagues found no link between these variables.

Rather, they found a link between headaches during Covid-19 and an increased risk of depression.

The study cannot prove the cause and effect. So it was not possible to find out if it was Covid that caused the depression, or if these people who were probably affected by depression before the infection, experienced even the most severe symptoms of Covid or perceived them as such.

* The US News article was adapted in Albanian by Tiranapost.al