People With Mental Health Conditions Are at High Risk for COVID-19, So Why Aren’t They Being Prioritized

• People with severe mental illness are at higher risk for COVID-19 but are unlikely to be prioritized to receive the coronavirus vaccine.
• People diagnosed with attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, or schizophrenia are much more likely to contract the new coronavirus than people without severe mental illness.
• Experts say these groups should be given priority for a COVID-19 vaccine.

People with severe mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and major depressive disorder have a higher risk of contracting the new coronavirus and dying from COVID-19.

Yet in most countries, this at-risk population is not prioritized to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.

“Society needs to prioritize at-risk groups, but it is dispiriting to see that even during the pandemic, mental health is an afterthought — if that — for many countries,” Hilkka Kärkkäinen, president of the Global Alliance of Mental Illness Advocacy Networks-Europe (GAMIAN-Europe), said in a news release.

“The scientific evidence is clear that COVID, and the resulting lockdown, is causing significant harm to people with severe mental health problems, but very few countries are addressing this. This needs to change.”

In a new study, Kärkkäinen and her colleagues looked at 20 European countries to see how they prioritized at-risk groups for COVID-19 vaccination.

They found that only Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom recognized severe mental illness as a high-risk medical condition that allows people to be vaccinated earlier.

Their results were published Feb. 17 in the journal Lancet Psychiatry.

It’s a grim statistic that is mirrored by the United States.

Only a few states, such as New Jersey and Ohio, include people with severe mental illness in the early phases of the COVID-19 vaccination rollout. And these were limited to inpatients at psychiatric hospitals.