COVID and schizophrenia: Why this deadly mix can deepen understanding of the brain

Dr. Howard Myrick has a daughter who has a mental illness.

Keris Myrick

Most of the time, the voices in Myrick's head don't bother her. They say nice things. Sometimes they get loud and mean, like when a deadly Pandemic shut down society as we know it.

Things go really, really fast and they seem to be disastrous. Myrick was diagnosed with schizophrenia 25 years ago. I had a breakdown in my house. Just lost it.

She was able to calm herself down and quiet the voices, and as the epidemic wore on, she kept busy by working for a foundation, hosting a show and writing a book. She was worried about other people like her.

Myrick says that people with schizophrenia were not considered the priority vulnerable population to be served or to be addressed in the same way as people with other chronic health conditions.

The omission occurred despite the fact that people with schizophrenia are three times more likely to die from COVID-19 than the general population. The risk of death from the virus is greater for people with diabetes, heart disease or any other condition aside from age.

According to the study's lead author, people's initial reaction was one of disbelief.

Some researchers wondered if the disparate death rates could be explained by the poor physical health of people with schizophrenia. Nemani's study was able to control for those factors because all the patients in the study were tested and treated by the same doctors in the same health care system.

The UK, Israel, South Korea, and other countries with universal health care systems showed the same findings. The risk from the UK was five times greater.

Nemani asks if there is something inherent to the disorder that is contributing to this.

Nemani says that the same immune malfunction that is causing severe COVID in people with schizophrenia could also be what is driving their psychotic symptoms. She says this shows that schizophrenia is a disease of the whole body.

The data from the pandemic sheds light on the theory in a whole new way, opening doors for new discoveries.

This is a rare opportunity to study the relationship between the immune system and psychiatric illness, by looking at the effects of a single virus at a single point in time.

It could lead to new immunological treatments that work better than the current drugs.

The data about risk should be shared more widely and taken more seriously. Extra precautions should be taken for people with schizophrenia. They wanted to get vaccine priority for the population.

Brandon Staglin is the president of One Mind, a mental health advocacy group based in Napa Valley, and he says that it has been a challenge.

He and other advocates started lobbying public health officials for priority access to the vaccines when they first saw Nemani's data. They wanted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to add schizophrenia to its list of high-risk conditions.

They heard crickets.

Staglin says it doesn't make sense.

In England and Germany, people with serious mental illness were prioritized for vaccines from the beginning of the roll out. In the U.S., the CDC added schizophrenia to the priority list in October of 2021.

Staglin says they were happy when that happened, but they wish there had been quicker action.

Myrick says it is always like this with mental illness.

She says it is like we have to remind people.

As scientists learn more about the link between COVID and schizophrenia, Myrick and Staglin both say mental health must be more than an afterthought.

This story was reported by NPR, KQED and Kaiser Health News.