

The authors recommend early conversations about needs following acute care, such as psychotherapy, cognitive reevaluations, and vocational counseling.ĭo to the highly contagious nature of the virus, social isolation is a pervasive requirement for managing the spread of COVID-19. This vigilance is required because COVID’s independent impacts on brain function, which we don’t yet fully understand, may also compound with recovery from neurological conditions such as strokes. Take a holistic approach to therapy options: This study emphasizes that patients recovering from neurological sequelae of COVID should be carefully monitored.

Mental health impact of COVID-19īattling COVID-19 also brings mental health challenges, which can impact functional presentation and lower treatment engagement. In another single-center study looking at persistent symptoms following COVID-19 hospitalization, scientists found that even after over 100 days, patients still reported fatigue (55%), shortness of breath (42%), loss of memory (34%), concentration difficulties (28%), and sleep disorders (30.8%). The most common speech and language issue was word finding. Speech and language issues occurred in 48.6% of respondents. In fact, 85.1% of all respondents reported experiencing brain fog and cognitive dysfunction.
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Life-altering: The same study found that due to Long COVID many people were unable to return to work, emphasizing the profound impact of these issues, and the importance of figuring out how to help these patients.Interestingly, researchers found that speech, language, and cognitive issues tended to emerge 4-8 weeks after initial COVID-19 symptoms, and persisted beyond 24 weeks. Delayed onset : These symptoms ranged from physical symptoms such as fatigue, dry cough, or nausea, to more neuropsychological symptoms such as short-term memory loss, problem solving, and speech and language issues.In a not-yet peer reviewed paper analyzing survey data from over 3,700 people who had symptoms consistent with COVID-19, researchers found trends not only in the types of symptoms that people had, but also in the timing at which they experienced them: There are four ways that COVID-19 is currently impacting speech, language, and cognitive skills: Neuropsychological impact of COVID-19Īs noted above, Long COVID is receiving more and more attention as scientists prioritize investigating the long term effects of the disease.

How COVID-19 impacts speech, language, and cognition As the scientific community continues to uncover the lasting symptoms associated with Long COVID, we also need to make a plan to figure out how to best help those currently struggling with these long-term effects. They range from more physical symptoms such as pulmonary, cardiovascular, and systematic issues like fatigue, to neuropsychological symptoms impacting cognition, speech and language, memory, emotion and mood, and the now hallmark symptoms of loss of smell and taste. Long COVID can cause a variety of symptoms. However, more and more research is emerging assessing the morbidity of COVID-19 and its long-term symptoms. Research thus far mostly prioritized the mortality of COVID-19 (understandably so given the urgency to better understand this deadly virus). So what IS Long COVID? What does the existing research tell us? When we analyze an illness like COVID-19 we look at mortality, or how deadly it is, as well as morbidity, or the overarching impact of the disease other than death. Long COVID: The latest challenge in the fight against the novel coronavirusĪs we continue to learn more about COVID-19, a new term, “Long COVID”, emerged. Read on to hear current research findings related to COVID-19’s lasting effects on cognitive function, and what we here at Constant Therapy Health are doing about it. This is especially true for many people with previously diagnosed conditions, such as prior strokes, TBIs, or diagnoses of dementia. For some patients, COVID-19 has a long-term, far-reaching impact on their daily lives, impacting them physically, emotionally, and cognitively. We’ve heard from more and more COVID-19 survivors that the virus’ impact lasts beyond the first few weeks of immediate symptoms.
