A NEW study has found having Covid-19 increases a person’s risk of developing psychiatric disorders such as anxiety, depression and insomnia.

Researchers at Oxford University’s department of psychiatry, have reported the first large-scale evidence coronavirus survivors are at an increased risk, and having a psychiatric disorder increases the chance of getting Covid.

The study, published in The Lancet Psychiatry, used the TriNetX electronic health records of 69 million people in the US including more than 62,000 cases of Covid-19.

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In the three months following testing positive for Covid-19, one in five survivors were found to get a diagnosis of anxiety, depression, or insomnia, for the first time.

This is about twice as likely as for other groups of patients over the same period. Covid-19 was also associated with more new psychiatric diagnoses in people who already had a history of psychiatric problems.

Paul Harrison, Professor of Psychiatry at Oxford University, who led the study, said: “People have been worried that Covid-19 survivors will be at greater risk of mental health problems, and our findings in a large and detailed study show this to be likely.

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"Services need to be ready to provide care, especially since our results are likely to be underestimates of the actual number of cases. We urgently need research to investigate the causes and identify new treatments.”

The researchers also found that people with a pre-existing psychiatric diagnosis were 65 per cent more likely to be diagnosed with Covid-19 than those without, even when the known risk factors for Covid-19 were taken into account.