It’s not that coronavirus has affected just the mental health of adults across nations in the long term. Covid survivor children too are at an increased risk of neurological and psychiatric conditions such as cognitive deficit, insomnia, ischaemic stroke, nerve/psychotic disorders, and epilepsy or seizures even months after they were infected, researchers have found following a large-scale observational study of more than 1.25 million patient health records.

The report is published in The Lancet Psychiatry journal.

The study that looked at data of 185,748 children found that post-Covid risk trajectories differed in children compared with adults. Children were not more likely to experience mood or anxiety disorders in the six months following SARS-CoV-2 infection.

 However, they had “an increased risk of cognitive deficit, insomnia, intracranial haemorrhage, ischaemic stroke, nerve, nerve root, and plexus disorders, psychotic disorders, and epilepsy or seizures”.

 Unlike adults, cognitive deficits in children had a finite risk horizon (75 days) and a finite time to equal incidence (491 days).

 “Children have a more benign overall profile of psychiatric risk than do adults and older adults, but their sustained higher risk of some diagnoses is of concern,” said the study. In both generations, a sizable portion of older persons who were given a neurological or psychiatric diagnosis, particularly those with dementia, epilepsy, or seizures, later passed away.

Immediately following the appearance of the delta variant, higher rates of ischemic stroke, epilepsy or seizures, cognitive deficits, insomnia, and anxiety problems were noted.

“With Omicron, there was a lower death rate than just before emergence of the variant, but the risks of neurological and psychiatric outcomes remained similar,” revealed the study, led by researchers at the University of Oxford in the UK.

“The fact that neurological and psychiatric outcomes were similar during the Delta and Omicron waves, indicate that the burden on the health-care system might continue even with variants that are less severe in other respects,” the researchers warned.