I suppose it was bound to happen. The first week of term was marked by many hours in large lecture theatres filled with shiny first-year faces, the inaugural staff versus students soccer game (won by the staff to everyone’s surprise) and a party to launch our national-first Bachelor of Psychology degree.
Exactly which of these events laid the foundation for the second week is unclear, but at the end of the first week I went from Covid-negative on Saturday to two-tests-worth-of-positive on Sunday.
It’s been a weird one because I’ve had many worse colds and I was back to negative three days later. Maybe residual immunity blunted the effects, or perhaps it’s just a weak variant. I’ve been fine, but not everyone is after Covid. Six in 10 people in my 2023 (Mental Health) State of the Nation Survey told me they’d had Covid. One in 10 have had it twice or more.
We know a reasonable amount now about the physical health effects of Covid. As well as acute flu-like symptoms, about a third of patients experience persistent fatigue and shortness of breath in the month after recovery. Between 6% and 10% of them experience longer-term symptoms, or long Covid. Only about 2% of my participants were confident that they had long Covid.
What about mental health? Survey participants who said they’d had Covid reported slightly elevated mental distress – they were 4-5% more likely to meet criteria for clinically significant psychological disorder. This is consistent with international research that suggests slightly greater levels of anxiety and depression post-Covid. An upside is that people who’ve had multiple bouts don’t show further elevated distress.
Before we conclude that Covid causes depression and anxiety, let’s consider the “third-variable” problem: perhaps there is a third factor involved that might explain the link between Covid and mental distress. We know that national murder rates are correlated with ice-cream consumption, but I’m guessing that’s got more to do with summer, and more people being out and about, than brain freeze-induced rages.
One possibility is sleep. Our survey participants reported slightly poorer sleep quality if they’d had Covid.
Sleep disturbance is a common symptom following Covid. A US study of 137 people found that nine months after infection, three-quarters continued to experience poor sleep, 17% reported anxiety and 9.4% obsessive compulsive symptoms.
Sleep is critical to our physical and mental health; it’s the time when the lights have all gone off and our brain’s janitorial staff go around sweeping the floors and flushing away the rubbish that’s accumulated during the day. Better sleep quality is associated with stronger activity between brain regions – the electric impulses that drive our thoughts can navigate the corridors without tripping on the over-full rubbish bins.
A good night’s sleep has the effect of refreshing our resources. Over the course of a day, our bucket of impulse control and emotion regulation empties out and the janitors fill this up as we sleep, so when a challenge presents itself the next day we’re better able to deal with it.
A lot of my wellbeing-related research focuses on emotion regulation because it’s “transdiagnostic” – how we manage our emotional stresses and strains seems to be important for many areas of wellbeing, including anxiety and depression.
It goes without saying that sleep is critical for young people. In terms of mental health, documented long-term effects of Covid on children and adolescents include fatigue, distractibility, dampening of some senses and sleep disturbance. Studying from home and limited face-to-face contact with friends and family during Covid may also prove to be influential on young people’s social and emotional development during that time.
My hope is that we learn from the pandemic in time for the next one. At the same time it’s not something I want to lose sleep over.
