Psychological Issues Such as Depression and Anxiety May Affect Long COVID

not a causal relationship, but there is an association. Sue and Wang, research fellow at Harvard and lead author of the study, joins us for What to Know. Thanks for joining us, you Wan, thank you. It's my owner to be here. Well, let's talk about long COVID right now. You know, in a lot of ways, we've seen the pandemic subside. Many have been infected, many have had their vaccines and booster shots. But a big curiosity that still remains in all of this is long COVID. You know.

So these are people that have been infected with COVID and then the symptoms remain for sometimes months after even they might be testing negative. And one of the big things that we don't know is why exactly it happens and who might be more susceptible. You know, a lot of people have said if you're a compromise or have hypertension, different physical things you know, could increase your risk for

long COVID. But this new study, so when that you were working on, shows that some psychological stressors are also indicators of a more likelihood of this. So depression, anxiety, loneliness, a lot of times these are predictors of experiencing long COVID. So tell us a little bit more about the study, So Win, thank you for the introduction of our research

and thank you for interest in our research. So briefly, what we did was from early in the pandemic, we followed more than fifty four thousand people for a year. Over that year, more than three thousand contracted COVID nineteen, so we also about your COVID symptoms and how long they lost it. We found that psychological distress prior to infection, including depression, anxiety, worry, perceived stress, and loneliness, were significantly

associated with increased risk of long COVID. These was not explained by health behaviors such as smoking, or by physical health conditions like asthma. And interestingly, what we found is that these psychological conditions are even stronger predictors for long COVID as compared to those physical conditions you just mentioned

like diabetes, hypertension, and obesity in our cohort. Finally, among those who developed long COVID, we found that people with higher psychological distress before getting COVID were also had higher risk of getting daily life impyramid due to long COVID, and they report more symptoms of long COVID. Yeah, there's a lot of interesting stuff in here. I mean, if people had reported two or more types of these distressors, it increased their risk by that's how much it could

have increased it. So they're just more susceptible to all that stuff. And to be clear, having stress and anxiety and depressionalities doesn't necessarily mean it's going to cause long COVID. You know, it's not a causal effect per se, but there is an association about having a lot of these stressors in your life. So what we did was an observation study, so we can not say it's causal. But after you try to account for those demographic factors like age, stacks, raise, ethnicity,

and also those physical conditions. We try to disentangled effect whether these psychological conditions are more strongly predictors than those physical conditions. Now, a lot of times when we're talking about long COVID, as I mentioned, you know, these are prolonged symptoms after having COVID, A lot of times people say they they experienced, you know, the brain fog, being very lethargic, just being super tired, and a lot of people will say, well, a lot of they're just kind

of carrying this in their head. It's just a psychological thing for them. And to be clear again that that's not what the study is showing as well. I mean, it's not that it's all in your head. It's a purely psychological thing. There are some physical symptoms that do persist as well. But just because you've had some of these symptoms before, it does not mean it's just a

purely psychological phenomen on exactly. So our results should not be misintegrated as supporting the have of hypothesis that it's all in our heads. First of all, among those who develop long COVID, around half of them did not have any psychological distress at baseline, and most importantly, when we excluded people who only reported fatigue had it those kind of psychological and neurological symptoms as their long COVID symptoms,

the results were almost identical. Yeah, I mean, I know that all of this just really makes more of a call for giving more people access obviously to mental health care. We saw people go throughout the pandemic and really suffer a lot, their mental health suffered a lot, and again, you know, just having these things before could make this very novel virus. You know, treating our bodies in a crazy different way than they've ever felt before could also

exacerbate some of those things. So I know that's been one of the calls as well, is to pay more attention to it and have better accessibility for mental health. Yes, exactly, especially with our findings that these are even stronger predictors than those well established risk factors of those physical conditions.

We definitely need to understand that mental health conditions and physical well being are so strongly interconnected, and we need to make cure accessible and improve the qualitative care for those who need it. Well, we'll keep an eye out for more research that comes down the line on long COVID. As I mentioned, it's kind of one of those big curiosities still and very tough to uh see what it's going to happen beforehand, and then also difficulty in treating that.

So we'll keep an eye out for all of that. Sue and Wang, research fellow at Harvard and lead author of this latest study on long COVID. Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you for having me. Have a good one. I'm Oscar Ramrors and this has been reopening America. Don't forget effort today's big news stories. You can check me out on the Daily Dive podcast every money through Friday, so follow us on iHeart Radio or wherever you get your podcast