Overview

Many autoimmune diseases have potential to affect mental state and cause psychiatric symptoms such as depression or agitation, apathy, fatigue, psychosis and cognitive dysfunction.

Examples of such conditions include:

• Thyroid disorders e.g. Grave’s disease (thyrotoxicosis)
• Addison’s disease
• Guillain Barré syndrome
• Systemic lupus erythematosis
• Autoimmune encephalitis

It is a sad fact that beyond basic medical training, nearly all general psychiatrists, and even most ‘neuropsychiatrists’, have no medical training or experience of working as junior doctors in medical specialities. This means that their awareness of conditions as above, and many more, is sadly lacking.

I am qualified in both General Medicine (to hospital medicine standard) and in Neuropsychiatry. It is very rare to find this in any psychiatrist nowadays. This may explain why complex psychiatric problems are poorly dealt with in general psychiatry.