Abstract:
AIM:
The COVID-19 pandemic has posed challenges around the world, generating an outpouring of research regarding the virus and its impacts, from molecular biology through clinical medicine to public health. Less well recognised are the psychological and psychiatric sequelae of the pandemic. We will provide an overview of these latter effects and consider their implications for pandemic management, focusing particularly on public trust in scientific and governmental authority.
METHOD:
Our narrative overview presents evidence that COVID-19 has impacted on people’s minds, biologically and psychologically, with downstream effects on social behavior.
RESULTS:
Clear evidence has emerged that SARS-CoV-2 and its variants can affect the CNS and cause organic brain disorders including delirium (1) and first-episode psychosis (2). Effects on brain function are likely to be indirect, for example via cytokine activation, perfusion or clotting abnormalities (3). Evidence has also emerged for pandemic-associated psychopathology via social causation. For example, presentation of severe eating disorders, including new onset anorexia nervosa, has been linked to pandemic lockdowns in the absence of viral infection (4). Social causation also underlies the marked polarisation of views regarding the origin of the virus, scientific and governmental authority, and the role of lockdowns, masks, vaccines, and re-purposed pharmaceuticals (5).
CONCLUSION:
Of all the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, some of the most worrying and least understood are in the social domain. Largely due to the polarising effects of social media algorithms, misinformation has proliferated (5), extreme views becoming commonplace. On the one hand are rampant conspiracism and Q-anon-level delusions regarding the ‘plandemic’. On the other, ‘authorities’ insist vaccines are “safe and effective”, as if both adjectives were absolute, blithely ignoring accumulating evidence that both are nuanced and contextual. Science mandates that skepticism be encouraged, not pathologised, if based on verifiable evidence.
REFERENCES:
1. Zimmer K. COVID-19’s Effects on the Brain. TheScientist. 2021;www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/covid-19s-effects-on-the-brain-68369.
2. Esposito CM, D'Agostino A, Dell Osso B, Fiorentini A, Prunas C, Callari A, et al. Impact of the first Covid-19 pandemic wave on first episode psychosis in Milan, Italy. Psychiatry Research. 2021;298(113802).
3. Marshall M. How COVID-19 can damage the brain. Nature. 2020;585(7825):342-3.
4. Hansen S, Stephan A, Menkes DB. The impact of COVID-19 on eating disorder referrals and admissions in Waikato, New Zealand. Journal of Eating Disorders. 2021;9:105.
5. Scales D, Gorman J, Jamieson KH. The covid-19 infodemic: Applying the epidemiologic model to counter misinformation. N Engl J Med. 2021; 385:678-81.