While the number of new corona infections seem to have less and less relevance in the public discussion, another aspect of the pandemic is increasingly coming to the fore: long-COVID. But what exactly is meant by this? How is the diagnosis and treatment of mental and cognitive complaints in the context of long-COVID carried out?
Ms. H. fell ill with COVID-19 six months ago and reports cognitive deficits in addition to physical symptoms such as shortness of breath or muscle pain. She can only concentrate on something for a few minutes, reading texts is hardly possible anymore, when driving she has to be very alert and in group conversations she finds it difficult to focus. Especially in a family with three children, where there is often a high level of noise, these concentration problems are stressful. But also her memory performance has deteriorated. She has to write down all appointments in her mobile phone and check them several times a day so that she doesn’t forget any of them. When shopping, she always has to use shopping lists. She finds her inability to remember numbers and billing procedures to be extraordinarily burdensome, as these are daily requirements of her job as a medical assistant. Until before she fell ill with COVID-19, she considered activities in this context to be one of her strengths. In addition to these cognitive problems, it sometimes happens that she cannot remember a certain word during a conversation, whereupon she falters in her flow of speech. In themselves, the cognitive deficits are stable in intensity, although the perceived complaints are also dependent on the time of day.
Unfortunately, Ms. H. is only one of many people who go to the “Long-COVID Outpatient Clinic for Mental and Cognitive Disorders” at the Department of General Psychiatry at Heidelberg University Hospital. We talked to the head of the outpatient clinic, Prof. Dr. Daniela Roesch-Ely, about long-COVID and her work with people affected by it.