Living with long COVID: A researcher’s perspective on mental health and care gaps

When Beth Stelson contracted COVID-19 nearly six years ago, she expected to recover. Instead, she became part of the first wave of patients who never fully got better, long before the term “long COVID” existed. “I got sick with COVID in March 2020… and I just didn’t get better,” said Stelson, an assistant professor at Washington University in St. Louis School of Public Health. She was a PhD student at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health when she developed long COVID. As both a patient and a social epidemiologist, she turned to research. “For many of us, research is a coping mechanism to make sense and meaning out of this experience,” sh...