Depression among Hypothyroid Patients: An Analysis

Pages: 393-395
Neelam and Uma Mittal (Department of Psychology, University of Rajasthan, Jaipur, Rajasthan)

Hypothyroidism is a pervasive endocrine ailment resulting from scarcity of thyroid hormone which creates mood disturbance. Therefore, the endeavour of this research was to find out the depression levels in hypothyroid patients. A random sample of 150 female participants (age 20 to 40) was taken through the purposive sampling technique out of which 50 participants were suffering from subclinical hypothyroidism (Group 1), 50 were of overt hypothyroid (Group 2) and 50 participants were healthy individuals (Group 3). Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) was applied to all participants to measure the depression stage. The observed BDI mean value for Group 1 and Group 2 was 13.18 and 21.20 respectively and the mean BDI score of the control group (Group 3) was 6.30. Comparing the individuals’ BDI scores across the various groups, statistically significant differences were found. Further “t-test” was applied to find out the significant variation among the groups and results indicated that overt hypothyroid patients were found more depressed than subclinical hypothyroid patients and the normal control group.