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Vitamin B12 Deficiency and Psychiatric Illness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

R. Shulman
R. Shulman*
Affiliation:
University Department of Psychological Medicine, Southern General Hospital, Glasgow, The Bethlem Royal Hospital and The Maudsley Hospital
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Extract

Many psychiatric symptoms have been described in pernicious anaemia, including depression, manic excitement, paranoid states, confusional episodes, and dementia. Although vitamin B12 deficiency is known to produce neurological symptoms there is much less certainty about its role in producing mental symptoms. Despite this uncertainty, it has been asserted that carrying out vitamin B12 assays on psychiatric patients will enable doctors to cure for good severe disabling disease which otherwise may end in chronicity (Edwin et al., 1966). Routine examinations to exclude pernicious anaemia have been advocated for all psychiatric patients (Strachan and Henderson, 1965; Hunter and Matthews, 1965). A prudent preliminary is a critical evaluation of the causal relationship between vitamin B12 deficiency and individual psychiatric syndromes.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 113 , Issue 496 , March 1967 , pp. 252 - 256
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1967 

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