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.

Researchers compared the incidence of mental illnesses in people before and after a COVID-19 diagnosis, in each cohort. Mental illnesses included in this study comprised depression, serious mental illness, general anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, eating disorders, addiction, self-harm, and suicide.

The team found that the incidence of most of these conditions was higher one to four weeks after COVID-19 diagnosis, compared to the incidence before or without COVID-19.  This elevation in the incidence of mental illnesses, was mainly seen after severe COVID-19 that led to hospitalisation and remained higher for up to a year following severe COVID-19 in unvaccinated people.

Read the full University of Bristol news item

Paper: ‘COVID-19 and mental illnesses in vaccinated and unvaccinated people’ by Venexia M. Walker et al. in JAMA Psychiatry