Although monkeypox primarily causes injuries and fever, people who have suffered from it suffer psychological repercussions related to the disease, according to several patients and doctors.
“You do not come out unscathed from a disease that has done you a lot of damage, locked up for three weeks and, moreover, with the weight of discrimination,” says Corentin Hennebert, 27, who was one of the “first cases” in France . Since he recovered, other patients have also told him about the “psychological price” of the disease.
“There is a psychological distress that is linked to several things,” explains Nathan Peiffer-Smadja, an infection specialist at the Paris hospital of bichatwhich coordinates a clinical study in infected patients.
On the one hand, the “pain” and the possible “sequelae, especially aesthetic”, and on the other hand, the fact of suffering from “a disease that people have never heard of” that occurs two years after the covid epidemic -19, and that requires a three-week isolation.
A small number of patients develop internal injuries, especially coloproctological (affecting the colon, rectum and anus), which sometimes require hospitalization, he explains.
This was the case with Hennebert: “I had the impression that razor blades were sticking into me all the time. I can’t find any other comparison, it was so strong », he recalls.
Before being treated with tramadol, a powerful opioid painkiller, he had “lost 7kg in three days” as he stopped eating. “He only thought about the pain,” he recounts.
Sébastien Tuller, a 32-year-old Frenchman, did not have these pains, but he did worry a lot about the appearance of the injuries. “He was really ugly and he didn’t know what to do. I was very distressed to see (pustules) appear on my face.
The trauma of HIV
“When a disease is visible, it’s scary because it can potentially stigmatize”, considers Michel Ohayon, director of 190, a sexual health center in Paris, who compares it to “Kaposi’s sarcoma” which was “the symptom of AIDS”.
A parallelism that affected people usually make.
Although the two diseases “have nothing to do” in terms of severity, monkeypox “rekindles the traumas of HIV”, according to Nicolas Derche, national director of the health service of the French group SOS, which brings together 650 social and medico-social structures. .
“In HIV-positive people, this reactivates very violent things”, whether it be “the fear of a diagnosis” or “reviving a strong stigmatization”, explains Vincent Leclercq, an activist with the NGO Aides in the fight against AIDS.
As with HIV, monkeypox is currently circulating within the MSM (men who have sex with men) community, which has led to increased discrimination.
“There is a lot of common homophobia and it has a real impact on mental health,” explains Sébastien Tuller, LGBTIQ+ activist and jurist.
“Many do not say they have the ‘monkeypox’ or that they have had it for fear of being stigmatized,” he says.
“Especially young people, who have not yet made the ‘coming-out’ in their family, or people who are afraid that their sexual orientation will transcend at work due to the required three weeks of isolation.