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Anchor lead: Surviving hospitalization with Covid-19 may be just the beginning of recovery, Elizabeth Tracey reports

Among the many conditions that can develop once someone is discharged from the hospital after Covid-19 are mental health problems. Adam Kaplin, a psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins who’s working with many such patients, names depression as a particular issue.

Kaplin: Crazy high rates of depression, your final downstream common effect of any insult to the brain whether it’s a metabolic insult or an infectious insult. So that’s a big part of this is the inflammation but trying to convince people that it’s the infection that caused this because when they get home they expect, oh I’m home, I should be fine, and they’re not fine. They get sent home and they’ve got at least a month of rehab they have to do to even begin to get back to their old selves, emotionally, physically, all of this.   :32

Kaplin says acknowledging the challenges and seeking treatment for depression will help. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.