Psychosomatic Medicine 4:273-282 (1942)
© 1942 American Psychosomatic Society

Hypoglycemia and Tension-Depression

¹ The New York Hospital, and The Department of Psychiatry, Cornell University Medical College, New York
² Departments of Psychiatry and Medicine, The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, Maryland

It is apparent that the phenomenon of low blood sugar, with its attending symptoms, represents a disturbance that derives from a variety of possible factors, among which must be included the factor of the total individual and the possibility of personality disturbance.

The clinical syndrome of tension-depression and hypoglycemia is described.

The hypoglycemia seems secondary to the psychiatric disorder since it has been shown that it disappears with management of the psychiatric condition.

The usual standards of what constitutes normal blood sugar should be utilized with some latitude (10).

There are wide variations in the blood sugar level outside the accepted range of normal which may produce little or no discomfort.

The glucose tolerance test should be interpreted in terms of the individual, not of established norms. A symptom-producing sugar level for one individual may be normal for another.

Fasting blood sugars are inadequate for the determination of hypoglycemia.

The relative degree of decline during the test (rather than arbitrary limits) may be more important in bringing about symptoms.

Treatment of hypoglycemic symptomatology in a certain group of such patients might better be focused on the personality disturbance.