This systematic review and meta-analysis reports that most people with COVID-19 infections should recover without experiencing mental illness, if infection with COVID-19 follows a similar course to previous coronavirus epidemics. Notes that the longer-term mental health effects of the pandemic should be carefully monitored.
- This review looked at the psychiatric and neuropsychiatric consequences of coronavirus infections in 3,550 patients hospitalized with SARS, MERS, and COVID-19
- Patients with SARS-CoV-2 can experience delirium, agitation, and altered consciousness, but most of those diagnoses were made with patients were in the intensive care units.
- Only 12 low-to-moderate quality COVID-19 studies were included in the meta-analysis.
- Based off of data from SARS and MERS, clinicians should be aware of the possibility of depression, anxiety, fatigue, post-traumatic stress disorder, and rarer neuropsychiatric syndromes in the longer term.