Psychiatric patient profiling during the COVID-19 pandemic – should schizophrenia be assigned among risk factors?

Abstract

Objective. While the identification of vulnerable groups is critical in any pandemic, scarce information has been published on COVID-19 patients with underlying psychiatric comorbidities. The present study aimed to assess whether a preexisting diagnosis of schizophrenia represents an independent risk factor for severe COVID-19 and whether patients with schizophrenia have poorer outcomes of COVID-19 compared to patients with any other premorbid mental illness. Methods. The present data derives from the medical records of 242 patients admitted to “Prof. Dr. Alexandru Obregia” Clinical Psychiatry Hospital (Bucharest, Romania), Department 9, with a positive severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) test result between October 2020 and May 2021. Results. 128 (52.9%) of the patients were diagnosed with a schizophrenia spectrum disorder. Psychiatric patients who developed a severe form of infection were older and more likely to have relevant somatic comorbidities for COVID-19, compared to the rest of the patients in the study sample (p<0.001). We did not identify a significant association between a particular psychiatric diagnosis and a severe form of infection (p>0.005), with only a small proportion (12.5%) of patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia spectrum disorder having developed a severe form of infection. Conclusion. Although a pre-existing diagnosis of schizophrenia spectrum disorder was not associated with severe forms of COVID-19, patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders represented more than half of the population in our study, a finding that supports the higher risk of infection for this group and suggests that these patients should be considered a vulnerable population.