Analysis: how Covid-19 patients can recover from ICU delirium

The trauma of intensive care often triggers long-term mental health problems, and counselling is crucial to rehabilitation, says Honorary Associate Professor Dr Dorothy Wade (UCL Epidemiology & Health). "Last night the porters took me down to the basement in a supermarket trolley. I was met by hooded monks who stole my soul and turned me into a zombie. I woke up in my own coffin." "I heard the nurses whispering about me in the night behind the blue curtains. They are plotting to murder me and my baby, and I saw one of them take a gun from her handbag." "There was a wild animal rampaging through the marketplace in the hospital, attacking everyone until the police shot it." These are the terrifying or bizarre experiences I hear about daily as a psychologist working on the intensive care units (ICUs) and Covid-19 wards in a London hospital. The stories are hallucinations or delusions from ICU delirium, a syndrome caused by drugs, infections, lack of oxygen and other medical reasons. But to patients these visions are vividly and unarguably real.