Some infections are tougher to recover from than others. Take COVID-19 infections, for instance. According to a new study in Open Forum Infectious Diseases, people with COVID and COVID-like symptoms typically take around nine months to recover from their infections mentally, and around three months to recover from their infections physically, suggesting that mental recovery is a particularly lengthy process that requires more study and more medical attention.
“We have newly recognized the difference in recovery with respect to mental [versus] physical well-being after a COVID infection,” said Lauren Wisk, a study author and an assistant professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, according to a press release. “The findings [show] that health care professionals need to pay more attention to their patients’ mental well-being after a COVID-19 infection and provide more resources that will help improve their mental health, in addition to their physical health.”
Read More: What We Know and Don’t Know About Long COVID
The Long-Lasting Effects of COVID Symptoms
COVID-19 infections are associated with a wide range of symptoms, from fever and fatigue to coughing and congestion. But in the months after a COVID-19 infection, many patients still aren’t at their best, at least in terms of their mental and physical health. Indeed, all sorts of studies have shown that patients can continue to report reduced well-being for months after COVID — sometimes as a result of a chronic, post-COVID condition called long COVID — with harmful results for their health-related quality-of-life (HRQoL).
Hoping to find out how long it takes to truly recover, both mentally and physically, from COVID-19 symptoms, the study authors analyzed the recovery times of people with COVID and COVID-like infections. Studying around 1,100 COVID-positive and around 300 COVID-negative patients, the team surveyed participants about their physical function, pain, fatigue, anxiety, depression, social participation, sleep disturbance, and cognitive function for a total of 12 months following their illness.
After a year of surveys, the study authors found that participants fell into one of four health categories: optimal overall HRQoL, poor mental HRQoL, poor physical HRQoL, or poor overall HRQoL. Though most of the participants regained their optimal physical health faster than they regained their optimal mental health, around 20 percent of the patients continued to report poor overall HRQoL around 12 months after their infection.
“The most substantial transition from poor physical to optimal HRQoL occurred by 3 months, whereas movement from poor mental to optimal HRQoL occurred by 9 months,” the study authors wrote. “Regardless, approximately 1 in 5 respondents remained in a poor overall HRQoL class with a high likelihood of self-reporting long COVID up to 12 months after initial infection."
Read More: What is Long COVID, and What Are the Symptoms?
COVID and COVID-Like Consequences
Intriguingly, the COVID-positive participants recovered from their infections slightly faster than the COVID-negative patients, as more COVID-positive patients reached optimal HRQoL after a year than the COVID-negative ones. According to the study authors, this may mean that COVID and COVID-like infections have similar sequelae, or aftereffects, with the consequences of both being important subjects for future research.
“[COVID positive] participants were more likely to return to the optimal HRQoL class compared to [COVID negative] participants,” the study authors wrote. “Prior medical research may have previously underestimated the prevalence of serious negative sequelae after acute illness, explaining why [COVID positive] and [COVID negative] participants appear more similar.”
Taken together, the findings show that the long-term effects of COVID and COVID-like infections are especially long, particularly when it comes to patients’ mental health.
“Future research should focus on how to improve the treatment models of care for patients who continue to experience COVID-19 symptoms,” Wisk added in the release. “Especially as 1 in 5 patients may continue to suffer over a year after their initial infection.”
This article is not offering medical advice and should be used for informational purposes only.
Read More: What Can the Pandemic Teach Us About Mental Health?
Article Sources
Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:
Open Forum Infectious Diseases. Association of SARS-CoV-2 With Health-Related Quality of Life 1 Year After Illness Using Latent Transition Analysis
JAMA Network Open. Association of Initial SARS-CoV-2 Test Positivity With Patient-Reported Well-being 3 Months After a Symptomatic Illness
Sam Walters is a journalist covering archaeology, paleontology, ecology, and evolution for Discover, along with an assortment of other topics. Before joining the Discover team as an assistant editor in 2022, Sam studied journalism at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
