ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the physical illnesses which are present with only psychiatric symptoms and are thus indistinguishable from any of the symptom descriptions in the Research Diagnostic Criteria, and the psychiatric section of the DSM III Manual. Psychiatric symptomatology can be and frequently is the first manifestation of a reversible physical illness. Spinal cord tumors are most likely to present and be misdiagnosed as conversion symptoms. Many psychiatrists are particularly unequipped to deal with physical illness in their patients despite being physicians. New technologies will aid us in the detection of more and more subtle forms of disease which present psychiatrically. Peterson and Perl14 claim that carcinoid, pheochromocytoma, and adrenal corticotropic hormone -secreting tumors, especially Oat Cell carcinoma of the lung, present psychiatrically most frequently. Pituitary, thyroid, parathyroid, renal, ovarian, and stomach cancers can also secrete hormones and present psychiatrically. The psychiatric disturbances seen in hyperparathyroidism are directly related to the serum calcium levels.
