About Silver streak. ([Atlanta, Georgia]) 2023-???? | View Entire Issue (May 31, 2023)
HEALTH Seniors being treated for mental and emotional post-COVID problems By Mark Woolsey A 70-year-old woman who played pickleball four times a week and is now too weak to pick up a racket. A 65-year- old man suffering anxiety attacks over recurring long-haul COVID problems. A 72-year-old with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as the result of a near-death hospital episode. Counseling and treating seniors with mental and emotional post-COVID problems is an evolving challenge, say mental health professionals. Call it a new frontier. The Mayo Clinic says research shows among those 65-plus, one in four has at least one medical condition that might be due to COVID-19 in the month to one year following the initial infection. Another study reported that older adults with pre-existing psychological challenges were more likely to suffer from post-COVID syndrome’s mental health Impacts. “Older adults are more likely to focus on their changing functional state,” says Abigail Hardin, Ph.D., Rehabilitation Psychology Postdoctoral Training Director in the psychiatry department at Rush University Medical Center, Chicago. Think about anything from debilitating headaches to difficulty doing household chores. She says that’s as opposed to younger patients much more likely to speak the language of depression. Other challenges include doctors who are dismissive of long COVID’s mental health consequences on older adults and a stigma surrounding medication and various treatment options among some elderly. Dawn Potter, a psychologist with the Cleveland Clinic puts it this way, “I think it’s hard to measure (the success rate of such treatment) and research on therapy for long COVID is still in its infancy.” The many physical (weakness, fatigue, fever, heart, and lung problems) and mental/emotional symptoms (depression, PTSD, anxiety, confusion, insomnia) seem closely intertwined. “The reality is that our brains don’t exist in a bubble,” said Dr. Heather Murray of the Mayo Clinic on the clinic’s website. “So, if you have systemic inflammation problems or viral syndromes affecting other organs, it makes sense that they would also affect the brain and cause other psychological symptoms.” Atlanta infectious disease specialist Dr. Joel Rosenstock established a long COVID clinic about two years ago and says dealing with all aspects of the syndrome is daunting. “In the long COVID world the saying is, ‘if you’ve seen one long COVID patient, you’ve seen one long COVID patient, ‘“he adds. Mental health professionals are trying a variety of techniques as they seek improvement for their post- COVID patients. One of them is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, used to treat a wide variety of disorders by analyzing thought distortions and refuting them to produce changes in thinking and mood. Potter says that long haulers can readily fall into such thinking as “I can’t go on vacation anymore, I used to be able to go to the beach. I don’t think I can do those things anymore. So, what’s the point?” Therapists challenge such all-or- nothing thinking by getting patients to perceive that while their lives are difficult at the moment, that they should continue working to do the things they enjoy and are capable of. Hardin says challenging distorted thoughts like “I’ll never feel better again” means working with a patient to identify evidence for or against the accuracy of thought. She’s also done experiments where evidence from both sides is presented as if a patient is in a court of law. Engaging with people, exercising, and taking up a familiar or fresh activity are all important, says Nadine Kaslow, professor of psychology at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, as well 141 MAY 2023 RoughDraftAtlanta.com
