Some endocrine aspects of affective disorders.

While frank hypothyroidism can precipitate depression, most depressed patients are euthyroid. Nevertheless, there is evidence that a resilient HPT axis favors recovery from depression. Clearly small amounts of the thyroid hormones accelerate the antidepressant action of TCA, at least in women, and usually remedy TCA failure in both men and woman. Athough TRH appears to produce mood elevation in many kinds of patients as well as in normal subjects, this property cannot presently be exploited therapeutically. The present value of TRH in psychiatry is as a psychoendocrine diagnostic tool. Used in this way it has revealed a subpopulation of depressed patients and a subpopulation of alcoholic patients who show a blunted TSH response in the absence of usual endocrinological explanations.