Neurological and psychiatric experts are seeing more reports of COVID-19 sufferers developing psychotic symptoms, even when they have no prior history of mental illness.

But he recognizes the signs, and urges people to seek immediate medical attention if they think someone is beginning to show symptoms of COVID psychosis.

The COVID unit was anxiety-inducing, Price said, but her husband didn't show signs of psychosis until he was home from the hospital.

A first episode of psychosis normally occurs in late adolescence or early adulthood, Alpert said.

However, a study he co-authored in November featured a 49-year-old man and 34-year-old woman who had COVID-19 and no prior history of mental illness.

“You can’t imagine the stories, the devastation and the things that people are doing out of character – thriving wonderful people with zero prior (mental health) history,” she said.

“There’s probably over 50-plus individual case reports where people are describing very specific instances of psychosis in the setting of someone having COVID-19,” said Dr.

If she had known about COVID-induced psychosis, Jennifer Price said, she would have been better prepared to help her husband.

Alpert agrees more focus should be placed on the possible mental health and neurological outcomes of COVID-19.

“Society itself, whether people have COVID or not, are experiencing significant mental health impacts,” he said

“Any COVID task force that doesn’t have mental health or neurological expertise on it is not really a full task force.”

She hopes a mental health question can be added to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's V-safe survey, a smartphone-based tool that uses text messaging to provide personalized health check-ins after people receive the COVID-19 vaccine