The terrible aftermath of Wuhan pneumonia
In late 2019, an outbreak of Wuhan pneumonia virus broke out in Wuhan, China, and has since spread rapidly around the world, resulting in more than 1.805 million deaths worldwide to date. The Wuhan virus is frightening, but it’s far from over. Recent studies have found that a very small number of patients who have had Wuhan pneumonia suddenly develop psychotic symptoms and even fantasize about killing their own children.
The New York Times reported on Dec. 29 that Dr. Hisam Goueli, a psychiatrist at South Oaks Hospital in Amityville, New York, relayed the story of a female patient during an interview. The woman is a 42-year-old physical therapist and mother of four children. She cried to Goueli (Hisam Goueli) that she always had the delusion that she was planning the brutal murder of her children and kept seeing images of her children between the ages of two and 10 being brutally murdered, “I love my children, and I don’t know why I have this feeling of wanting to behead them.”
The woman, who has never had symptoms of mental illness in the past and has no family history, said she first heard a “voice” telling her to kill herself, and then was driven by the voice to kill her own children. She even had delusions that her child would be run over by a truck or beheaded.
Dr. Gurley studied her medical history, and the only thing of note was that she had contracted martial lung this spring, with only mild symptoms. Gulley was unsure at the time whether the female patient’s mental state was related to the Wuhan virus. But after the second, third and fourth similar cases emerged one after another, Dr. Gulley felt that “something was wrong. It turned out that doctors in the United States and several other countries had reported similar cases. Patients who had never had mental problems in the past developed severe psychiatric symptoms several weeks after contracting the disease.
The New Times report also cited several related cases, including a 36-year-old nursing home employee in North Carolina who suddenly became so paranoid after contracting martial lung that she consistently believed her three children would be kidnapped, and tried to protect them by letting them enter through the business window of a fast-food restaurant to escape the bad guys. She also kept thinking her cell phone was being tracked and also suspected her partner would steal her money.
A 30-year-old construction worker in New York City began imagining his cousin was going to murder him after he contracted martial lung. At one point, he tried to strangle his cousin in bed, claiming it was “to protect himself. After police took him to the hospital, he was diagnosed as “extremely violent. While in the hospital, he also removed the hospital’s radiator with the intention of using its parts to break a window and escape.
In addition to some isolated reports, a British study of neurological or psychiatric complications in 153 patients hospitalized with martial lung found that 10 had “new onset mental illness. Another study found 10 such patients in a Spanish hospital. Doctors in different parts of the United States have also reported cases of similar symptoms.
The doctors interviewed said the patients were too psychologically fragile to be interviewed and only agreed to be referred by their doctors. However, medical experts say that this extreme mental disorder is only a small fraction of those suffering from martial lung disease. But these cases are also considered examples of the disease process of the martial lung virus, which affects mental health and brain function in a different way.
Although the initial perception of the virus is that it primarily causes damage to the respiratory system, there is more evidence that the virus can also cause many other symptoms such as neurological, cognitive, or psychological, and that these symptoms may even occur in mildly ill patients who do not have severe lung, heart, or circulatory problems, or that the mental effects of the virus may impede their ability to live and work normally, but doctors do not know how long this condition will last and how to treat it.
Experts believe that the body’s immune system encounters vascular problems or a surge in inflammation caused by Wulnavirus may lead to related effects on the brain.
Dr. Vilma Gabbay, co-director of the Bronx’s Montefiore Einstein Hospital Psychiatry Research Institute at Montefiore Einstein, said, “The immune system initiates a viral The immune system reacts to the virus and produces some neurotoxins that enter the brain and cause damage.”
Gabbay further explained that his hospital had admitted two patients who developed mental illness after contracting martial lung and were not found to have any brain infection by brain scans, spinal fluid analysis and other tests, but a 49-year-old man heard voices and thought he was the devil, and a 34-year-old woman started carrying knives, undressing in front of strangers and adding hand sanitizer to food.
The report shows that most of these particular cases were mild cases of Wulong, Gulli’s patients did not have breathing difficulties and other problems, but did have mild neurological symptoms, such as: numbness in the hands, dizziness, headaches, dull sense of smell, and after two weeks to several months, they developed severe mental illness with symptoms that were quite dangerous and terribly dangerous for those around them.
The peculiar thing is that the appearance of this particular symptom is about 30 to 50 years of age, and this age group is rare mental illness, Gurley said, the more common mental illness in young people is thought disorder, while the elderly more common to dementia, Gurley met these special cases, all know they have problems to seek medical attention, and the general thought disorder patients, do not feel that they have been out of reality.
Baltimore Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine) neurovirologist Robert Yolken (Robert Yolken), Ph.D., said that although people’s bodies may recover from wulong, but in some cases, their immune systems may not be able to shut down, or may continue to work because “a small amount of virus is delayed clearance.
For some people who recovered from martial lung earlier, brain fog (brain fog, referring to brain dysregulation, degeneration), memory and other problems. Doctors believe it may be due to the immune system continuing to work and not being able to stop. Emily Severance, a schizophrenia expert at Johns Hopkins University, also said that cognitive and psychiatric problems in these patients who have recovered from martial lung may be caused by similar conditions in the brain.
In addition, Yocum said it may depend on which area of the brain the immune response affects, “some people have neurological symptoms, some people have psychiatric symptoms, many people have both.”
Experts do not know whether patients who develop “post-martial lung psychosis” are at greater risk of developing the disease because of their genetic predisposition or because they have an underlying psychiatric condition.
Sporadic cases of “post-healing psychosis” and mania have been seen with the 1918 pandemic flu virus and other viruses such as SARS and MERS coronavirus. Jonathan Albert, director of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Einstein Hospital, said scholars believe these symptoms are not unique to the new coronavirus (also known as Chinese communist virus, COVID-19) that causes pneumonia in Wuhan, and that studying these cases will help to better understand mental illness.
Although the number of these special cases is small, but the initial symptoms are indeed quite serious, there is a 46-year-old pharmacist paranoid, thinking that evil spirits invaded her home, was sent to the hospital by her family, she cried in the hospital for four whole days; 55-year-old British female patients on the red paranoia, old suspicion that the nurse is the devil will hurt her, it took 40 days to recover; 49-year-old male patients hospitalized for a few weeks on the discharge, but two months later and re-admitted.
Each patient’s treatment and recovery period were different.
The most complex treatment process should be the patient of Gurley, the physical therapist who planned to murder her child. Gurley said her condition was getting worse every day, and she tried about eight different medications, including antidepressants, psychiatric drugs and lithium. She was so sick that she was considered for electroconvulsive therapy because nothing else worked.
Two weeks after this patient was hospitalized, she could not remember what her two-year-old child looked like. Ultimately it was risperidone that proved effective. Too many questions remain unanswered, Gurley said.
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