Associations between psychiatric disorders, COVID-19 testing probability and COVID-19 testing results: findings from a population-based study

Abstract

Background Many psychiatrists are worried their patients, at increased risk for COVID-19 complications, are precluded from receiving appropriate testing. There is a lack of epidemiological data on the associations between psychiatric disorders and COVID-19 testing rates and testing outcomes. Aims To compare COVID-19 testing probability and results among individuals with psychiatric disorders with those without such diagnoses, and to examine the associations between testing probability and results and psychiatric diagnoses. Method This is a population-based study to perform association analyses of psychiatric disorder diagnoses with COVID-19 testing probability and such test results, by using two-sided Fisher exact tests and logistic regression. The population were UK Biobank participants who had undergone COVID-19 testing. The main outcomes were COVID-19 testing probability and COVID-19 test results. Results Individuals with psychiatric disorders were overrepresented among the 1474 UK Biobank participants with test data: 23% of the COVID-19 test sample had a psychiatric diagnosis compared with 10% in the full cohort (P < 0.0001). This overrepresentation persisted for each of the specific psychiatric disorders tested. Furthermore, individuals with a psychiatric disorder (P = 0.01), particularly substance use disorder (P < 0.005), had negative test results significantly more often than individuals without psychiatric disorders. Sensitivity analyses confirmed our results. Conclusions In contrast with our hypotheses, UK Biobank participants with psychiatric disorders have been tested for COVID-19 more frequently than individuals without a psychiatric history. Among those tested, test outcomes were more frequently negative for registry participants with psychiatric disorders than in others, countering arguments that people with psychiatric disorders are particularly prone to contract the virus.

The impact of Covid-19 pandemic on community-oriented mental health services: The experience of Friuli Venezia Giulia region, Italy

“…Studies suggest that psychiatric patients seem to be at high risk of infection, due to pre-existing disorders, unhealthy lifestyle, cognitive impairment or reduced level of awareness of the risk [ 3 , 8 , 9 ]. In contrast, recent findings from United Kingdom (UK) indicated that mentally-ill patients were at lower risk of contracting the infection compared to general population [10] . Nonetheless, the continuity of mental care and the integration of mental health services with public health is crucial to guarantee an effective response to the Covid-19 emergency [11] .…”

“…The cumulative incidence in FVG population was 2.69 positive cases per 100,000 inhabitants on the 31st of May 2020 [ 30 ), while it was only 0.24 positive cases per 100,000 inhabitants among MHDs’ users at the same date. A recent British study demonstrated that patients with psychiatric disorders were more likely to be tested for Sars-Cov-2 infection and to be negative more frequently than the general population [10] . We did not find, however, other studies with individual data on positive patients to Sars-Cov-2 among mental health services.…”

“…On the other hand, it is reasonably likely that most of patients with SMD were included. Since they also represent the individuals theoretically more subjected to the negative effects of infection [ 1 , 3 , 10 , 13 ], this low number seems an important epidemiological achievement. Finally, a strong adherence to monitoring indicators may be linked to the attitude of mental health professionals to tackle a new emergency, while adherence to recommendations monitored through a longer period may be diluted.…”

Disparities in Intensive Care Unit Admission and Mortality Among Patients With Schizophrenia and COVID-19: A National Cohort Study

“…Some data are known to be insufficiently coded in the medicoadministrative databases (eg, smoking, overweight, and obesity). We have no information on the contamination rate of SCZ patients 34 and the delay between the onset of infection and hospitalization. Treatment variables including psychotropics and repurposed or experimental anti-COVID-19 treatments were not available in the PMSI database.…”

Aripiprazole as a candidate treatment of COVID-19 identified through genomic analysis

“…The high prevalence of these comorbidities among individuals with severe mental illnesses should increase the risk of COVID-19 complications and therefore might prone to a poorer outcome. However, somewhat unexpectedly low incidence and lack of severity of SARS-CoV-2 infection among people with schizophrenia have been reported (de Lusignan et al, 2020;van der Meer et al, 2020).…”