New York City launches 10K participants study into Long Covid

NYC To Study Long-Term Outcomes of COVID-19 Among New Yorkers
https://www.nyc.gov/site/doh/about/press/pr2024/nyc-to-study-long-term-outcomes-of-covid-19.page

The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is launching a multi-year research study of long-term outcomes among adults infected with COVID-19. The Health Department will recruit up to 10,000 participants for the study when it launches this year and follow up with them over several years. Building on various surveys that have already been done nationally and locally, this series of surveys will produce New York City-specific data on how COVID-19 impacts individuals over time. These data will inform policy makers and program planners on the needs and barriers to support services for those experiencing long-term physical and mental health problems.

 

"Mental Hygiene"?

From Mental Hygiene: What It Is, Implications, and Future Directions (2021, Journal of Prevention and Health Promotion) —

Every day, people struggle with mental health challenges; one in five people will experience a mental illness in their lifetime. Innovative approaches to strengthen the public mental health strategy warrant careful deliberation. This article reintroduces and explores the conceptual framework of mental hygiene. The concept of mental hygiene was originally introduced in the early 20th century, with the aim of preventing and treating mental illness and milder mental disorders. The movement lost its momentum shortly thereafter and the concept went largely ignored since then. Mental hygiene is a form of preventive maintenance that can be likened to other hygienic practices. Through the plasticity of the brain, mental training activities can foster healthy cognitive patterns that are conducive to wellbeing. The article offers a brief overview of some of the mental hygiene practices one can engage in, on a daily basis, to support well-being and assist in preventing mental health issues. Such mental training behaviors may potentially reduce ubiquitous human tendencies to ruminate and mind-wander without awareness, which when in excess correlate with increased activity of the default mode network and susceptibility to the pathogenesis of mental illness, along with impeding human flourishing. The article advocates for the routine engagement in healthy mental hygiene to become a global recommendation.
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Meanwhile the field of molecular psychiatry is flourishing with studies: immunometabolic, with mitochondria and gut microbiome having primacy.

Spoiler: Some recent immune references

Brain borders at the central stage of neuroimmunology (2022, Nature)

Transcriptomic signatures of psychomotor slowing in peripheral blood of depressed patients: evidence for immunometabolic reprogramming (2021, Nature Molecular Psychiatry)

A sex-specific genome-wide association study of depression phenotypes in UK Biobank (2023, Nature Molecular Psychiatry)

Cerebrospinal fluid flow cytometry distinguishes psychosis spectrum disorders from differential diagnoses (2021, Nature Molecular Psychiatry)

Brain microvascular endothelial cells and blood-brain barrier dysfunction in psychotic disorders (2023, Nature Molecular Psychiatry)

Neuroimmune transcriptome changes in patient brains of psychiatric and neurological disorders (2022, Nature Molecular Psychiatry)

Spoiler: Some recent microbiome references

A gut-derived metabolite alters brain activity and anxiety behaviour in mice (2022, Nature)

A systematic review exploring the association between the human gut microbiota and brain connectivity in health and disease (2023, Nature Molecular Psychiatry)

Gut microbiota changes require vagus nerve integrity to promote depressive-like behaviors in mice (2023, Nature Molecular Psychiatry)

Circulating metabolites modulated by diet are associated with depression (2023, Nature Molecular Psychiatry)

The gut microbiome modulates the transformation of microglial subtypes (2023, Nature Molecular Psychiatry)

A systematic review of gut microbiota composition in observational studies of major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia (2022, Nature Molecular Psychiatry)

The gut microbiome and mental health: advances in research and emerging priorities (2022, Nature Molecular Psychiatry)

Multi-omics analyses of serum metabolome, gut microbiome and brain function reveal dysregulated microbiota-gut-brain axis in bipolar depression (2022, Nature Molecular Psychiatry)

Emerging role of the host microbiome in neuropsychiatric disorders: overview and future directions (2023, Nature Molecular Psychiatry)

 

Few would complain about preventive strategies as long as they're not used to stigmatise or blame people, but that's definitely got a whiff of 1930s Germany about it.

Even if they are well meaning, they need to look at their vocabulary.