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Experts say hospital ICU stays, often faced alone, bring mental health woes to older patients in particular

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The guide gives information about: How you might feel after spending time in intensive care. Psychoeducation about PTSD. Things about intensive care that can contribute to the development of PTSD. Information about delirium. Psychological approaches to treating PTSD. Signposting to evidence-based treatment. Information for mental health professionals working with patients who have PTSD following admission to intensive care.

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A crisis is silently brewing in hospitals around the world, and it may not be exactly what you think. While the numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths continue to swell, the very treatments used to battle this deadly disease are triggering life-altering mental health effects.

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The article discusses post-intensive care syndrome and its relation to diabetes. As the pandemic continues to spread across the world, there has been a phenomenal increase in hospitalizations, admission to hospital intensive care units (ICUs) and fatalities. During these times people with diabetes are at the risk of developing severe symptoms and complications of COVID-19 According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) both type 1 and type 2 diabetics are at a higher risk. It’s even riskier if your blood glucose levels are frequently high or if you’ve developed diabetes-related problems like heart or kidney disease. Being at higher risk for severe COVID-19, protection from exposure to the virus is important. In case you get sick, you should have enough critical supplies since leaving the house is not an option. It is also important that you know the situation at hand in case you require hospitalization.

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A stay in the hospital's Intensive Care Unit (ICU) can be daunting. Wires, tubes, beeping monitors, unfamiliar noises lurking in the background, and the constant fear of whether you will make it through the illness.
For critically ill patients who survive, the near-death experience can leave a lasting impact on their health. The road to recovery, then, stretches way beyond getting off the ventilator and coming back home.
Post Intensive Care Syndrome (PICS) is characterized by physical, cognitive and psychological symptoms that appear after a patient leaves the ICU.

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Coronavirus patients who require treatment in an intensive care unit could suffer from post-intensive care syndrome (PICS), experts say.
In general, patients who require intensive care are at risk for mental health issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression when their treatment is over, according to Weill Cornell Medicine at Cornell University. They also can suffer cognitive impairment and physical limitations.

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We tend to make sense of sickness by ascribing levels to it, like medals in Olympic boxing: There’s featherweight “I’m under the weather,” a welterweight “ghastly ill.” And then there’s the super heavyweight, an opponent that actually scares you. Few people have to face off with this kind of illness. I have. Which may be why, as I scan through the daily news about the coronavirus, I tend to skip the stats on how many have died, the ventilators we don’t have, the politics, the quarantines, the jobs lost, even the bread-baking. Instead, I find myself drifting into the minds of those souls strapped to gurneys in the hallway, encased in a macramé of tubes and wires, fighting for each breath. These are the ones facing the super heavyweight. Some of them will die. But the ones I think about are the ones who will survive. Because I’ve been there. I know that getting off the ventilator won’t be the end of the story. And I know that not being sick doesn’t mean you’re well.

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Although we are currently overwhelmed by the astonishing speed of infection of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the daily onslaught of new, and ever-worsening predictions, it is vital that we begin to prepare for the aftershocks of the pandemic. Prominent among this will be the cohort of post-intensive case survivors who have been mechanically ventilated and will like experience short- and medium-term consequences. The notion that patients surviving intensive care and mechanical ventilation for several weeks can be discharged home without further medical attention is a dangerous illusion. Post Intensive Care Syndrome and other severe conditions will require not only adequate screening but early rehabilitation and other interventions. Action must be taken now to prepare for this inevitable aftershock to the healthcare system.

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At least half of all patients who survive treatment in an intensive care unit will experience at least one of a triad of problems associated with post-intensive care syndrome, or PICS, and this may be true for people recovering from COVID-19 following ICU care.

PICS can manifest as problems with physical function, cognition and mental health, according to a fact sheet from the American Thoracic Society.

PICS is a relatively under-recognized issue, despite the fact that it affects a large number of people treated in an ICU, according to Patricia Ohtake, associate professor in the physical therapy program, School of Public Health and Health Professions.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has led to vastly increased admissions into intensive care.Around onein four ICU survivors develop Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in the months after admission, and others will develop depression or one of several anxiety disorders.This guide aims to provide information for healthcare professionals working with ICU survivors. It will help you recognise PTSD, and know how to help.

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Two months after leaving the intensive care unit, Rob Rainer returned to his law practice in Revere, eager to resume his old life after surviving a severe lung infection that tethered him to a breathing machine for a month.
But as he sat down at his desk, the former hard-driving multitasker found he couldn’t stay on track with even one task. Phone conversations left him overwhelmed. He was baffled by a computer program he himself had developed.
Today, five years later, Rainer’s life is very different — his law practice shuttered, his two houses sold. At 58, he lives modestly with his wife in a small condo in Hudson, N.H.
While the novel coronavirus didn’t exist in 2015, today thousands of COVID-19 patients in the United States are enduring the same experience that Rainer did, lying in a medication-induced coma as a ventilator pushes air into their weakened lungs for days or weeks on end. And like Rainer, many will never be the same.

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Hundreds of thousands of seriously ill coronavirus patients who survive and leave the hospital are facing a new and difficult challenge:
recovery. Many are struggling to overcome a range of troubling residual symptoms, and some problems may persist for months, years or even the rest of their lives.
Patients who are returning home after being hospitalized for severe respiratory failure from the virus are confronting physical, neurological, cognitive and emotional issues.
And they must navigate their recovery process as the pandemic continues, with all of the stresses and stretched resources that it has brought.
“It’s not just, ʻOh, I had a terrible time in hospital, but thank goodness I’m home and everything’s back to normal,’” said Dr. David Putrino, director of rehabilitation innovation at Mount Sinai Health System in New York City. “It’s, ʻI just had a terrible time in hospital and guess what? The world is still burning. I need to address that while also trying to sort of catch up to what my old life used to be.’”
It is still too early to say how recovery will play out for these patients. But here is a look at what they are experiencing so far, what we can learn from former patients with similar medical experiences, and the challenges that most likely lie ahead.