You’re not alone if you’ve experienced new or worsening mental illness after recovering from COVID. While the coronavirus’s long-term consequences on mental health remain a mystery, in the four years since pandemic onset, researchers worldwide have already documented a link between infection and mental health deterioration . Now, scientists in the U.
K. have uncovered a new piece of the puzzle: COVID vaccination may mitigate the virus’s adverse effects on mental health. The team, including researchers from the universities of Bristol , Cambridge , Oxford , and Swansea , as well as University College London , showed higher rates of mental illnesses among unvaccinated people, up to a year after severe COVID infection.
Their findings were published Wednesday in JAMA Psychiatry . “Our findings have important implications for public health and mental health service provision, as serious mental illnesses are associated with more intensive health care needs and longer-term health and other adverse effects,” Venexia Walker, PhD , a senior research fellow in epidemiology at Bristol Medical School and one of the study’s lead authors, said in a news release. “Our results highlight the importance COVID-19 vaccination in the general population and particularly among those with mental illnesses, who may be at higher risk of both SARS-CoV-2 infection and adverse outcomes following COVID-19 .
” The observational study assessed the medical records of more than 18.6 million adu.