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Mood and anxiety disorders in women with treated hyperthyroidism and ophthalmopathy caused by Graves' disease.

Bunevicius R, Velickiene D, Prange AJ

Department of Psychiatry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7160, USA. robertas_bunevicius@med.unc.edu

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the prevalence of mood and anxiety disorders in women with treated hyperthyroidism caused by Graves' disease and to compare them with the prevalence of such findings in women without past or present thyroid disease. METHODS: Thirty inpatient women with treated hyperthyroidism and ophthalmopathy caused by Graves' disease and 45 women hospitalized for treatment of gynecologic disorders such as abnormal vaginal bleeding, benign tumors or infertility were evaluated for the prevalence of mood and anxiety diagnoses using a standard Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview and for mood and anxiety ratings using the Profile of Mood States (POMS). At the time of assessment, it was discovered that 14 of 30 women with treated hyperthyroidism caused by Graves' disease were still hyperthyroid, while 16 women were euthyroid. RESULTS: Significantly greater prevalence of social anxiety disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, major depression and total mood and anxiety disorders, as well as higher symptom scores on the POMS, was found in hyperthyroid women with Graves' disease in comparison with the control group. A prevalence of total anxiety disorder, as well as history of mania or hypomania and lifetime bipolar disorder, but not lifetime unipolar depression, was more frequent in both the euthyroid and the hyperthyroid subgroups of study women in comparison with the control group. CONCLUSIONS: These results confirm a high prevalence of mood and anxiety disorders in women with treated hyperthyroidism and ophthalmopathy caused by Graves' disease. Hyperthyroidism plays a major role in psychiatric morbidity in Graves' disease.

Published 14 March 2005 in Gen Hosp Psychiatry, 27(2): 133-9.
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