Psychosomatic disorders (distress, depression, anxiety, somatization) in young patients who have had COVID-19

AIM: The mission is to assess possible psychosomatic disorders (in particular, stress as a nervous breakdown, an acute temporal phase of a specific disorder, which is manifested primarily by signs of depression and neurosis) in young patients who have had COVID-19, in the course of rehabilitation, to improve medical and psychological support after their discharge from the hospital.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: 60 convalescents who have had COVID-19 and had practically been healthy before (men aged 19.87 ± 1.64 years) were examined. The main clinical variants and manifestations of COVID-19 in our study were inapparent infection (II) — in 19 cases (31.67%), acute respiratory viral infection (ARVI) — in 21 cases (35.0%), pneumonia without respiratory failure (P) — in 20 cases (33.33%). These are clinical variants and manifestations of mild-to-moderate of COVID-19 severity. The diagnosis of all clinical variants and manifestations of COVID-19, the patients’ examination, treatment and discharge from the hospital were carried out in accordance with regulatory documents. The patients were examined 6–8 month after discharge from the hospital. Psychometric examination of these individuals to separate their clinical manifestations of distress and somatization and manifestations of depression and anxiety was carried out according to the questionnaire “The Four-Dimensional Symptom Questionnaire”, 4DSQ), developed in 1996 by the Dutch specialists B. Terluin. This questionnaire was translation into Russian and adapted by A.B. Smulevich et al. [2014]. Voluntary informed consent was obtained from each of the patients before their participating the study.

RESULTS: Indicators of distress, anxiety, somatization after all the clinical variants and manifestations of COVID-19 have a moderately increased level, which indicates a serious illness that has been suffered, in some cases with an unfavorable outcome. The strongly increased level of depression in our study is probably due to the presence of astheno-neurotic syndrome due to the previous COVID-19 disease. The data on the correlation between the scales of methods indicate the direction of possible psychoprophylactic work with convalescents.

CONCLUSIONS: The results of the study showed that young patients without concomitant diseases who have had COVID-19, even with a mild and low-symptom course, may develop psychosomatic consequences such as distress, anxiety, somatization and some others. The reasons, duration, potential risk factors for their development require further study, however, timely developed preventive and therapeutic and diagnostic measures, taking into account the individual characteristics of the patient, can have a positive effect.