Psychosis due to Acute Hypothyroidism during the Administration of Carbimazole

Abstract

The association of mental disorders with reduced thyroid function has been recognized for many years, the thyroid disturbances concerned falling into two distinct categories. The first involves a gradual reduction in the output of thyroid hormone over a period of months, or years due, for example, to Hashimoto's disease. Clinically recognizable myxoedema may eventually appear, and in some cases—one-third of Jellinek's (1962) series—it is associated with mental disorders of almost any type and degree (Akelaitis, 1936; Asher, 1949). Two reports (Logothetis, 1963; Pomeranze and King, 1966) make it clear that major mental illness, often clinically indistinguishable from what might be called the normal run of schizophrenias, affective disorders and dementias, can be caused by hypothyroidism even before any clinical evidence of thyroid disorder appears.