THE COMMITTED

Some Long COVID patients are being pressured into psychiatric wards

- By Jamie Ducharme

IN LATE 2022, ERIN, A 43-YEAR-OLD FROM PENNSYLVANIA, AGREED to spend six weeks in a psychiatric ward, getting intensive treatment for an illness she knew she didn't have.

That decision was a last resort for Erin, who asked to be identified only by her first name for privacy. Her health had deteriorated after she caught COVID-19 nearly a year earlier; the virus left her with pain, fatigue, rapid weight loss, digestive problems, and vertigo. After another bout with a virus months later, Erin only got sicker, developing heart palpitations, muscle spasms, hoarseness, and pain in her neck, throat, and chest.

Erin was no stranger to chronic illness, having coped with a connective-tissue disorder her whole life. This was different. She became unable to work and rarely left her home. Her usual doctors were stumped; others said her litany of symptoms could be manifestations of anxiety.

When it became too painful to eat and swallow, Erin grew severely malnourished and was hospitalized at a large academic medical center. “I felt at the time like this was my last hope,” says Erin, who has since been diagnosed with Long COVID. “If I didn’t get any answers there, I didn’t know where to go afterward.”

Once again, however, she was disappointed. The only physical diagnosis her doctors landed on was vocal-cord dysfunction, which Erin felt did not explain her wide range of symptoms. When her doctors began to discuss discharging her, Erin panicked and said she could not manage her excruciating symptoms at home—a sentiment that she says contributed to concerns of self-harm among her doctors and kicked off conversations about a stay in the psychiatric ward. Eventually, seeing no other way forward, Erin agreed to go. “I just got increasingly defeated over time,” she says. “I didn’t know what to do.”

She was admitted for a six-week stay and given diagnoses she knew were wrong: an eating disorder and anxiety.