Psychosomatic Medicine 11:70-73 (1949)
© 1949 American Psychosomatic Society

Psychologic Tension and Serum Iodine Levels in Psychiatric Patients without Evidence of Thyroid Disease

¹ Department of Psychiatry and Mental Hygiene, Yale University School of Medicine

When a heterogeneous population of psychiatric patients without clinical thyroid disease was divided on the criterion of serum precipitable iodine concentration, a simultaneous qualitative segregation of the population in respect to higher and lower levels of psychologic tension was discovered. There were statistically significant, though very small, mean differences in serum precipitable iodine concentration between patients with higher and those with lower levels of tension. These findings may reflect gradual increases in thyroid activity (within the "normal" range) associated with repeated psychologically stressful experiences; and, in turn, the increased neural sensitivity associated with higher thyroid hormone output may help to perpetuate high levels of tension. Increased thyroid secretion may result from the stimulation of anterior pituitary thyrotropic hormone output by adrenergic substances discharged during stressful experiences.

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