๐๐ฆ๐๐ฅ๐ฅ ๐๐ฎ๐ฆ๐๐๐ซ ๐จ๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ญ๐ข๐๐ง๐ญ๐ฌ ๐๐๐ฏ๐๐ฅ๐จ๐ฉ ๐๐๐ฏ๐๐ซ๐ ๐๐ฌ๐ฒ๐๐ก๐จ๐ญ๐ข๐ ๐๐ฒ๐ฆ๐ฉ๐ญ๐จ๐ฆ๐ฌ
Almost immediately, Dr. Hisam Goueli could tell that the patient who came to his psychiatric hospital on Long Island this summer was unusual.
The patient, a 42-year-old physical therapist and mother of four young children, had never had psychiatric symptoms or any family history of mental illness. Yet there she was, sitting at a table in a beige-walled room at South Oaks Hospital in Amityville, New York, sobbing and saying that she kept seeing her children, ages 2 to 10, being gruesomely murdered and that she herself had crafted plans to kill them.
โIt was like she was experiencing a movie, like โKill Bill,โโ Goueli, a psychiatrist, said.
The patient described one of her children being run over by a truck and another decapitated. โItโs a horrifying thing that hereโs this well-accomplished woman and sheโs like โI love my kids, and I donโt know why I feel this way that I want to decapitate them,โโ he said.
The only notable thing about her medical history was that the woman, who declined to be interviewed but allowed Goueli to describe her case, had become infected with the coronavirus in the spring. She had experienced only mild physical symptoms from the virus, but, months later, she heard a voice that first told her to kill herself and then told her to kill her children.
At South Oaks, which has an inpatient psychiatric treatment program for COVID-19 patients, Goueli was unsure whether the coronavirus was connected to the womanโs psychological symptoms. โMaybe this is COVID-related, maybe itโs not,โ he recalled thinking.
โBut then,โ he said, โwe saw a second case, a third case and a fourth case, and weโre like, โThereโs something happening.โโ
Indeed, doctors are reporting similar cases across the country and around the world. A small number of COVID patients who had never experienced mental health problems are developing severe psychotic symptoms weeks after contracting the coronavirus.
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