Psychosomatic Problems in the Psychoendocrinology of Hyperprolactinemia

Abstract

We are reviewing psychosomatic aspects due to the pituitary hormonal hyperproduction of prolactin. Studying the different modalities of amenorrhea-galactorrhea: Ahumada-Del Castillo syndrome, Chiari-Frommel syndrome, Forbes-Albright syndrome, etc. we know that high prolactin blood levels are the essential cause of this symptomatic binomial with the resulting sterility or infertility according to the case; nothing or almost nothing has been said referring to the purely psychic manifestations which accompany this endocrinological trouble and which induced us, regrettably, to classify this clinical picture as a mental illness. We would like to emphasize depression, a syndrome with which a woman can go to the psychologist and later to the psychiatrist, who will manage the patients according to their own diagnostic and therapeutic methodology, which will aggravate iatrogenically the depressive picture, because the psychopharmacological arsenal is not devoid of adverse effects, specially when antidepressives such as imipramine, amitriptyline, benzodiazepines and even sulpiride are used, which cause higher prolactin production.