Hyderabad: Covid infection takes toll on patients with severe mental illness

Hyderabad: With the surge in Covid cases in GHMC limits infecting a large number of people in the last three weeks, 80 abnormal inmates in the Institute of Mental Health (IMH), Erragadda, have got affected with the virus. These patients have severe mental illness and are at high risk for medical comorbidities whose psychiatric condition can worsen owing to the infection.

According to sources in IMH, sub-normal patients are difficult to treat when they have the virus. Many patients refuse to wear a mask and use sanitiser. Maintaining physical distancing is a challeng for them.

Further, the sources said, there is no ventilator support available in the institute. The IMH has shifted all the infected inmates to a separate ward to avoid the spread of virus.

The inmates, suffering from severe bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder besides chronic conditions like personality disorders, are very difficult to handle, as they do not cooperate with the doctors and nursing staff.

An IMA doctor, on the condition of anonymity, said even the in-house medics are not entering the Covid ward, due to fear that they might get infected as inmates are not wearing masks or following any other protocols. Even the helping staff is hesitating to go into the ward, he added.

"One patient had lower oxygen levels. He was immediately shifted to the Chest Hospital for ventilator support. We are seeing a good recovery rate, but around 50 patients are still infected. We now have a pulmonologist from the Government General and Chest Hospital to monitor the health condition of recovering inmates," said IMH Superintendent M Uma Shankar, adding that there are over 250 beds in the hospital. They are scattered in a family/male/female/jail wards.

Last year, during the first wave of Corona, around 37 patients were admitted after testing positive. Of them, nine were sent to Gandhi Hospital, and the rest isolated at IMH, as their condition was not serious.

Moreover, the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, conducted research and found that people with severe mental illness (SMI) may be experiencing greater psychological distress during the pandemic than the wider public.

The research shows that public health measures associated with Covid, including quarantine of suspected cases and lockdowns may negatively affect the mental health of people with SMI, through a change of environment, disruption of services, increased stress, and isolation. Existing research points to greater psychological distress during the pandemic for people with SMI, rather than demonstrating this distress is due to the pandemic, it found.