Psychological Distress, Persistent Physical Symptoms, and Perceived Recovery After COVID-19 Illness, 2021, Liyanage-Don et al

Many patients hospitalized for COVID-19 report physical and psychological symptoms that persist for months after viral clearance—the so-called “long-haulers”. 1 Symptom persistence is not only limited to those with severe forms of COVID-19, but also often occurs in patients with mild-to-moderate illness not requiring intensive care or prolonged hospitalization.2,3 COVID-19 can also result in symptoms of depression, anxiety, and/or posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which may interfere with subsequent physical recovery.4 In this study, we examined the association of depression and PTSD with perceived recovery following COVID-19 illness.

Open access, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11606-021-06855-w

 

The paper says:

"The most common persistent COVID-related physical symptoms were body aches (23.5%), fatigue (20.3%), shortness of breath (19.0%), and headaches (13.1%), each of which was more likely to be reported by patients with depression or PTSD (Fig. 1)."

"Depression was assessed using the 8-item Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-8, scores ≥10 considered positive)."

https://www.selfmanagementresource.com/docs/pdfs/English_-_phq.pdf

If I understood correctly, according to that questionnaire you'll get diagnosed with depression if you experience four of the following symptoms "nearly every day":

-- Sleeping too much OR Trouble falling or staying asleep

-- Feeling tired or having little energy.

-- Poor appetite

-- Trouble concentrating on things, such as reading the newspaper or watching television

-- Moving [or speaking] so slowly that other people could have noticed.

I think a better questionnaire is needed to discriminate between, on the one hand, depression, and on the other hand, symptoms of any other illness that is associated with severe fatigue or fatigability or pain.

(Edited for clarity.)

 

The paper says:

"Survey questions included demographics (age, sex, race, ethnicity), history of mental illness (depression, anxiety, PTSD), and the presence of nine common COVID-19 physical symptoms both during and after hospitalization."

'History of mental illness' presumably means a mental illness any time before having COVID-19.

Edit:
The paper reports a percentage of 15.0% self-reported history of mental illness (13.1% depression, 8.5% anxiety, 2.6% PTSD, 2.0% other).

Couldn't find figures on how that relates to the general population and to the proportion of patients that scored for depression in the study's questionnaies.

 

The same formula as always:

1. Patients' symptoms are dismissed and not even recorded, "diagnosed" with anxiety/depression/magical psychology
2. Researchers trawl medical records, find high incidence of anxiety/depression/magical psychology
3. Endlessly discuss angels dancing on hairpins

Always always the same. On and on for decades, the same cycle of failure, predictable and mediocre as always, literally failure justifying failure. And we have a self-feeding issue in that invalid "diagnoses" make it into records while the real diagnosis is explicitly excluded, leading to people asserting it means it doesn't really exist after all, which they would have asserted anyway.

Given this I don't think anything whatsoever out of mental health research can be trusted. The process is invalid and explicitly does not self-correct itself

 

More about diverse versions of the 'Patient Health Questonnaire':

Kroenke K, Strine TW, Spitzer RL, Williams JB, Berry JT, Mokdad AH. The PHQ-8 as a measure of current depression in the general population. J Affect Disord. 2009 Apr;114(1-3):163-73. doi: 10.1016/j.jad.2008.06.026. Epub 2008 Aug 27. PMID: 18752852.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18752852/

wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Health_Questionnaire#8-item_depression_scale

 

"Over the past 2 weeks how often have you been bothered by" mental health surveys that disregard the impact of physical diseases, or conditions?

For example, someone with iron deficiency could score a 9 or higher; a score of 10 is major depression using this measuring stick. Symptoms of iron deficiency include feeling tired, trouble concentrating, moving slowly. Add in feeling bad about yourself because you have no get up and go, and voila, you are labeled with major depression