Post COVID‐19 cognitive rehabilitation effects on depressive symptoms

Abstract

AbstractBackgroundMore than 600 million people have been infected by Covid‐19 since the beginning of the pandemic. Common cognitive and psychological symptoms in these patients are memory impairment, attention difficulties, anxiety and depression, and neuropsychological rehabilitation is a possible strategy to improve them. In addition, some studies have shown a decrease in depressive symptoms after starting a cognitive rehabilitation program, although this was not the main objective of rehabilitation.MethodFive patients underwent mood assessment, more specifically, depressive symptoms. For this, the Patient Health Questionnaire‐9 (PHQ‐9) was used. The application was made immediately before and after the cognitive rehabilitation intervention, lasting 20 weekly sessions of about one hour of activity.ResultThe evaluation was performed on five patients with a mean age of 52.5 years (Table 1). These presented measures that indicated the presence of depressive symptoms at the beginning of the study. After 20 sessions of cognitive rehabilitation it was not possible to observe an objective change in depressive symptoms. This can be explained by the reduced number of individuals in the sample, which may have impaired the statistical calculation. But it was observed a clinical improvement of depressive symptoms was observed in 60% of patients and 40% remained stable (Table 2). Clinical improvement was also noted in patients, who reported that they were feeling better and that they resumed activities that they have previously avoided or that they were finding it easier, in addition to perceiving their own evolution throughout the treatment, increasing their sense of self‐efficacy and feeling more hopeful.ConclusionFinally, it is noted that cognitive rehabilitation is a possible strategy to improve not only cognitive impairment, but also the clinical manifestations of depressive symptoms in post‐Covid‐19 patients.