The COVID-19 pandemic has created much psychological distress. Coupled with the virus's ability to cause neurological symptoms like encephalitis, loss of smell and taste, meningitis, etc. — what else could SARS-CoV-2 be doing to the mind?A recent review published in Brain, Behavior, and Immunity discusses just that. “Are we facing a crashing wave of neuropsychiatric sequelae of COVID-19? Neuropsychiatric symptoms and potential immunologic mechanisms” is the paper’s title — written by Emily Troyer, MD, and her psychiatrist colleagues at the University of California San Diego.During the 18th and 19th centuries after the influenza pandemic, there was a drastic rise in cases of schizophrenia, sleep disorders, anxiety, depression, psychosis, delirium, and suicidality. Scientists called this “psychoses of influenza” — and indeed, influenza is known to invade the brain.
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