A new study that examined health data on 18 million people reveals a higher incidence of mental illnesses for up to a year following severe COVID-19 in unvaccinated people. Vaccination appeared to mitigate the adverse effects of COVID-19 on mental illnesses. The University of Bristol-led study, published in JAMA Psychiatry on August 21st, 2024, investigated associations of COVID-19 with mental illnesses according to time since diagnosis and vaccination status.
COVID-19 is associated with mental illnesses in both hospital and population-based studies. However, until now, there was limited evidence about the association of COVID-19 with mental illnesses when individuals had received COVID-19 vaccination. A cross-institution team, including researchers from University of Bristol Medical School, University College London (UCL), University of Oxford, University of Cambridge and Swansea University Medical School, sought to answer this by analysing the medical records of 18,648,606 adults aged between 18 and 110 years and registered with a GP in England.
Among the 18,648,606 adults in the cohort studied during the period before vaccination was available, the average age was 49 years, 50.2 per cent were female (9,363,710) and 1,012,335 adults had a confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis (recorded in testing data, by a GP, in hospital or in their death record). The authors also studied a vaccinated cohort including 14,035,286 adults, of whom 866,469 had a confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis, with an a.