excerpted from chapter 5 of Dealing with Depression Naturally, copyright (c) 1995 by Syd BaumelHypothyroidismDeprived of thyroid hormones, we grow cold, dry, dull, and depressed. If the deficiency is mild, we may seem to be "just depressed." Only sensitive blood tests will prove otherwise; yet doctors often fail to order them. Around 1980, psychiatrist Mark Gold and his associates at Fair Oaks Hospital in New Jersey were the first to show how significant that omission can be. Their subjects were 250 patients admitted for depression or severe fatigue. While routine screening procedures uncovered two cases of clinically overt, Grade I hypothyroidism, the more sensitive blood tests revealed that eighteen more patients suffered from mild (Grade II) or subclinical (Grade III) hypothyroidism (3,4). In studies since then of over a thousand patients, Gold's group and others have confirmed that mild or subclinical hypothyroidism afflicts some 10 to 15 percent of clinically depressed persons -- mostly women (6,8,9,10) -- and fully half of those depressives who don't respond to antidepressant drugs (10). Thyroid hormone replacement therapy, sometimes with antidepressants on the side, is usually all it takes to end the long nightmare (3,4,6,8,11).
N O T E S4. M. S. Gold et al., "Grades of Thyroid Failure in 100 Depressed and Anergic Psychiatric Inpatients," American Journal of Psychiatry, 138 (February 1981): 253-255. 6. M. S. Gold and J. S. Carman, "Thyroid Failure and Clinical Misdiagnosis." "Psychiatric Misdiagnosis." In Gold et al., eds., Advances in Psychopharmacology: Predicting and Improving Treatment Response (Boca Raton, Fla: CRC Press, 1984), pp. 67-81. 7. S. D. Targum et al., 8. C. B. Nemeroff, "Clinical
Significance of Psychoneuroendocrinology in Psychiatry: Focus on the Thyroid
and Adrenal," Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 50 (Supplement, May 1989):
13-22.
9. V. I. Reus, "Behavioral
Aspects of Thyroid Disease in Women," Psychiatric Clinics of North America,
12 (March 1989): 153-165.
10. R. H. Howland, "Thyroid
Dysfunction in Refractory Depression," Journal of Clinical Psychiatry,
54 (February, 1993): 47-54.
11. P. Sinaikin and M. S. Gold, "Endocrinology and Depression II: Thyroid
Function." In Oliver G. Cameron, ed., Presentations of Depression: Depressive
Symptoms in Medical and Other Psychiatric Disorders (New York: John Wiley
& Sons, 1987), pp. 275-290.
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