Long Covid is a serious multi-system biomedical disease
- Long Covid SOS
- 22 hours ago
- 2 min read
11 May 2026
Long Covid SOS today wrote to the President, President-elect, and CEO of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, expressing concern over their forthcoming conference programme:
Dear President, President-elect and Ms Walker,
We are writing to express our serious concern regarding the framing of Long Covid at your forthcoming congress, and specifically the decision to platform psychologising models of post-viral illness without equivalent representation from biomedical researchers and clinicians working in the field.
Long Covid is a serious, multi-system biomedical disease. A substantial and rapidly developing evidence base demonstrates immune dysregulation, endothelial and microvascular injury, autonomic dysfunction, coagulation abnormalities, metabolic impairment, and neurological involvement following SARS-CoV-2 infection. These findings cannot credibly be reduced to maladaptive beliefs, deconditioning, or somatisation.
This scientific reality is refl ected across UK institutional advice and guidance for post-infectious conditions. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guideline on ME/CFS moved away from unsupported psychosomatic assumptions and recognised the harms that arise when post-infectious illness is inadequately understood. The UK Covid-19 Inquiry has similarly heard extensive expert evidence regarding the biological complexity, severity, and long-term impact of Long Covid.
Against that backdrop, it is profoundly concerning that the forthcoming RCP conference appears to privilege frameworks which continue to interpret Long Covid primarily through psychological or functional lenses, while failing to provide balanced representation of the biomedical evidence and expertise now central to the field.
This is not a theoretical disagreement. The continued platforming of psychologising models has material consequences for patients. Such approaches have historically contributed to delayed diagnosis, inadequate investigation, inappropriate management, denial of support, and the erosion of trust between clinicians and patients with post-viral illness. They also risk distorting research priorities at a time when further urgent biomedical research funding is needed.
We also wish to address a predictable but mistaken characterisation of this criticism: namely, that challenging psychogenic explanations reflects a simplistic separation of mind and body. It does not. Long Covid, like all serious illness, has multiple impacts on individuals. Covid-19 infection may itself produce neuropsychiatric symptoms, and living with chronic illness understandably affects mental health and wellbeing. Psychological support can therefore form an important part of patient care.
However, integrated care is not the same as psychologisation. Recognising the psychological impact of illness must not be used to imply psychological causation in the absence of evidence. Our concern is not with holistic medicine, but with the persistence of explanatory models that continue to foreground psychogenesis despite overwhelming biomedical findings to the contrary.
The Royal College of Psychiatrists has a responsibility to ensure that discussions of Long Covid are scientifically rigorous, proportionate, and reflective of the current evidence base. At present, the balance of this conference programme risks reinforcing precisely the forms of dismissal and diagnostic overshadowing that many clinicians, researchers, and patients have spent years attempting to correct.
We would welcome the opportunity to discuss these concerns constructively with you and your colleagues, including how future events might better reflect the breadth of biomedical expertise now informing Long Covid research and care.
Yours sincerely,
Sarah Barley-McMullen
Chair, Long Covid SOS
On behalf of the Long Covid SOS team
