Psychoemotional Disorders and Sleep Impairments in Patients with COVID-19

Objectives. To study the prevalence of anxious-depressive disorders and sleep impairments in their structure among patients hospitalized with the new coronavirus infections (COVID-19) and to develop differential guidelines for their treatment in COVID-19 patients. Materials and methods. This report presents preliminary results from our own observations. We report here analysis of data from 119 patients (age 47–69 years, male and female) obtained at detailed interviews, including using telemedicine technologies, with evaluation on the following scales: the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), the Multidimensional Fatigue Inventory (MFI-20) for subjective assessment of asthenia, and the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). Results. Results on the HADS indicated that clinically severe anxious-depressive symptomatology was seen in 33 of 119 patients (28%) hospitalized with diagnoses of COVID-19: of these, 11% of cases (n = 13) showed clinical signs of significant anxiety only, while five (4%) showed clinically significant depression and 13% displayed increases on both the anxiety and depression subscales (n = 15). Increases on the MFI-20 scale (>20 points) were seen in 87 patients (73%) and sleep impairments on the PSQI were recorded in 32 patients (27%). Conclusions. The results of this study showed that most patients with COVID-19 had not only depressive symptomatology, but also anxious and hypochondriac disorders, asthenic symptom complex, and sleep impairments with difficulty going to sleep and poor sleep quality. Differential guidelines were developed for the treatment of these states taking account of the side effects of the drugs prescribed, interactions between drugs, and the features of the patients’ somatic condition. Drug selection must be based on the severity of the impairments found.