Hypoglycemia Simulating Psychoses

SYMPTOMS resulting from a specific organic pathologic condition may be erroneously ascribed to a functional illness. This is usually because the physician makes a psychiatric diagnosis by exclusion, instead of remembering that functional illnesses as well as organic diseases have certain specific symptoms characteristic of these syndromes.Symptoms due to hypoglycemia have been erroneously diagnosed as idiopathic epilepsy, acute alcoholism, brain tumor, anxiety neurosis, hysteria or psychosis.The large number of patients with idiopathic epilepsy, brain tumors or hypoglycemia who exhibit loss of consciousness, confusional states, drowsiness and stupor, amnesia, clonic convulsions and tremors stresses the importance of differentiating hypoglycemia . . .