The study, led by Johns Hopkins University researchers, found that two-thirds of study participants who survived a condition called acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and spent time in the ICU self-reported symptoms of at least one of these psychiatric disorders, and one-third of those patients with at least one psychiatric symptom said they experienced all three at the same time.
Contrary to the common risk factors associated with post-ARDS physical impairments and mortality, such as severity of illness and length of ICU stay, this study demonstrated that none of these risk factors had positive association with psychiatric symptoms.
"We need to pay more attention to the psychiatric vulnerability of ICU patients in recovery who are women, younger and unemployed prior to hospitalization, not just look at traditional measures of risk, such as greater illness severity and longer length of stay," says Dale Needham, M.D., professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.