COVID-19-Associated Acute Psychotic Disorder—Longitudinal Case Report and Brief Review of Literature

Abstract

Even though since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the literature became more and more abundant on data and hypotheses about the various consequences on people’s lives, more clarity needs to be added to the existing information. Besides the stressful experiences related to the COVID-19 pandemic, SARS-CoV-2 infection has been proven to impact brain functioning through direct and indirect pathogenic mechanisms. In this context, we report a case of a patient presenting with a first episode of psychosis following COVID-19. In our case, a 28-year-old male patient with no personal or family psychiatric history developed psychotic symptoms (delusions, hallucinations, and disorganized behaviour) that required antipsychotic treatment and inpatient hospitalization one week after he was discharged from the hospital after COVID-19. At the six-month and one-year follow-up, the patient was in remission without any psychotic signs or symptoms. A brief review of the literature is also provided. The case presented in this article outlines the possibility that the post-COVD-19 recovery period might be a crucial time for the onset of acute psychotic disorder, and therefore, routine psychiatric assessments should be carried out during all phases of the disease. A clearer picture of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health will most likely be revealed in the future as many consequences need long-term evaluation.

Clinical characteristics of people presenting with first episode psychosis pre‐ and during the COVID‐19 pandemic in KwaZulu‐Natal Province, South Africa

“…In addition, the COVID‐19 pandemic experience may have negatively influenced the nature and content of the psychotic symptomatology of people with or vulnerable to psychosis (Brown et al, 2020; Guan et al, 2020). Mental health practitioners noted anecdotal reports of increased paranoid content, such as contamination or infection (Fischera et al, 2020; Puiu et al, 2023), and new onset psychosis as a neuropsychiatric manifestation of the COVID‐19 infection (Ferrando et al, 2020). In a systematic review of nine papers that described 20 cases of new onset psychosis, the authors reported that all patients described developing acute onset of behavioural changes, worry about severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus‐2 (SARS‐CoV‐2) infection risk, anxiety, psychomotor agitation and sleep disturbances (Brahmi et al, 2021).…”