Terrifying coronavirus psychosis made a straight-identifying man confess to his wife that he’d had sex with men
A member of NHS clinical staff wears personal protective equipment (PPE) as she cares for a patient. (NEIL HALL/POOL/AFP via Getty)
A “heterosexual” man with coronavirus developed “acute behavioural disruption” during his illness, which led him to confess to his wife that he had sex with men.
According to a British Medical Journal case report, the 41-year-old man was taken to the emergency department of St Thomas’ Hospital on April 4 with what he described as “the worst headache of [his] life”.
At that time, he had been suffering with coronavirus symptoms, including a dry cough and fever, for over a week and said he felt like his “brain was racing”.
Before arriving at the hospital and being tested for coronavirus, he reportedly told his wife that he “felt like he was going to die” and then confessed to her that he had had sex with men.
In his description of the incident, he said: “As the ambulance came, I confessed to my wife that I had sex with men (most of which before marriage), although I am heterosexual.”
Coronavirus patient was ‘loud and highly aroused’.
Upon arriving at the hospital, “he was loud and highly aroused with sexual disinhibition and overfamiliar behaviour, inappropriately questioning and touching members of staff”.
“His speech was pressured, and his mood subjectively and objectively elevated.
“His thoughts were grandiose with persecutory elements, and he had persistent strong religious ideas, manifestations of which included attempts to anoint fellow patients with water.
“He also obsessively wrote down every personal interaction and bodily sensation. He said he found this experience ‘liberating’.”
The man tested positive for coronavirus, and his mental state became so erratic that he had to be sedated in intensive care and intubated for 24 hours.
After he was no longer sedated, his mental state continued to deteriorate and he was detained under Section 2 of the Mental Health Act 1983, then transferred to an acute inpatient psychiatric hospital.
12 days after he was detained, he was discharged into the community, and at a 23-day follow-up he had completely returned to normal.
According to the case report: “This is, to the best of our knowledge, the first report of an acute episode of mania or psychosis as a result of SARS-CoV-2 infection.”
It added that the man’s case indicated a need to test for coronavirus in “new onset psychiatric and neurological disorders”.
