An endocrine study of depressive illness

There are few reports in the literature of serial studies of thyroid and adrenocortical activity throughout the course of depressive illness. Attention has in the main been directed to the effects of short-lived emotional stress and physical procedures such as electro-convulsive therapy (E.C.T.) on the activity of the two glands. ( Hetzel et al., 1952; Bliss et al., 1956; Board et al., 1957). The study that is reported here has extended over several years in an attempt to explore the gap in our knowledge of the natural history of affective disorder from the point of view of thyroid and adrenocortical activity. Control studies, however desirable, have been impracticable, as they would have necessitated normal subjects submitting themselves to a rigid discipline for periods of several weeks.