{"doi":"10.3390/ijerph20043262","title":"COVID-19, Mental Health, and Chronic Illnesses: A Syndemic Perspective","abstract":"<h4>Background</h4>The COVID-19 pandemic is an epidemiological and psychological crisis; what it does to the body is quite well known by now, and more research is underway, but the syndemic impact of COVID-19 and mental health on underlying chronic illnesses among the general population is not completely understood.<h4>Methods</h4>We carried out a literature review to identify the potential impact of COVID-19 and related mental health issues on underlying comorbidities that could affect the overall health of the population.<h4>Results</h4>Many available studies have highlighted the impact of COVID-19 on mental health only, but how complex their interaction is in patients with comorbidities and COVID-19, the absolute risks, and how they connect with the interrelated risks in the general population, remain unknown. The COVID-19 pandemic can be recognized as a syndemic due to; synergistic interactions among different diseases and other health conditions, increasing overall illness burden, emergence, spread, and interactions between infectious zoonotic diseases leading to new infectious zoonotic diseases; this is together with social and health interactions leading to increased risks in vulnerable populations and exacerbating clustering of multiple diseases.<h4>Conclusion</h4>There is a need to develop evidence to support appropriate and effective interventions for the overall improvement of health and psychosocial wellbeing of at-risk populations during this pandemic. The syndemic framework is an important framework that can be used to investigate and examine the potential benefits and impact of codesigning COVID-19/non-communicable diseases (NCDs)/mental health programming services which can tackle these epidemics concurrently.","journal":"International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health","year":2023,"id":9132,"datarank":0.5333022092234121,"base_score":3.5553480614894135,"endowment":3.5553480614894135,"self_citation_contribution":0.5333022092234121,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.5333022092234121,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":34,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.038,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-02-13","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":78275,"name":"Afaf Saqib Qureshi","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":22415,"name":"Zahid Ahmad Butt","orcid":"0000-0002-2486-4781","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":78274,"name":"Kiran Saqib","orcid":"0000-0002-9663-2402","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":123,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-03-01T18:20:47.508186Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}