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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
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