From Stop the Thyroid Madness website (non-commercial, but I won't post the link). I'm going to ask my doctor about adding T3 or a different medicine (other than Synthroid).

Here's the article:

Psychiatric, Psychological and Emotional Aspects of Thyroid Disease i.e. it’s not all in your head!

It’s a common scenario for hypothyroid patients, especially when you are undiagnosed due to your doctor’s over-reliance on a faulty TSH range, or treated with thyroxine T4-only medications: You go to the doctor; you complain about your depression, or your anxiety, or your emotional swings, or your inability to concentrate, and onto your doctor’s favorite anti-depressant, anti-anxietal, lithium, or bi-polar med you go—beginning with the freebies on the shelf from his friendly and suited pharmaceutical rep. Sound familiar??

But the problem with this scenario is that your depression or anxiety or other mental health problem is not a unique and unrelated illness. It’s most likely due to having a low free T3, the active thyroid hormone, and/or adrenal insufficiency. And this is especially common for patients treated with Synthroid, Levoxyl and other thyroxine medications.

And this problem is not limited to depression. Low thyroid hormones, and the common occurrence of sluggish, poorly functioning adrenals, can play a role in a variety of emotional and behavioral symptoms and disturbances, including anxiety, excessive fear, mood swings like bi-polar, rage, irritability, paranoid schizophrenia, confusion, dementia, obsessive/compulsive disorders, and mental aberrations. So if your physician or psychiatrist failed to check your thyroid function with the correct tests (free T3 and free T4, plus antibodies), and your adrenal function with a 24 hour adrenal saliva test, and instead prescribed his or her favorite band-aid psychotrophic medication, you are left with medications that can include unneeded fluoride, that can clash with your other meds, that can make your hypothyroid worse, or can leave you with classic side effects…besides the cost.


The mother of the creator of this site is a classic example of the tragedy of poor assessment or treatment of thyroid function. After she battled clinical depression and anxiety for years while on Synthroid (and we now know due to the thyroxine treatment), she relinquished all control of her health to a doctor who gave her electric shock therapy–a treatment which only slightly lessened her chronic depression and dulled her memory and intelligence for the rest of her life.


Dr. Ridha Arem, in his book, “The Thyroid Solution: A Mind Body Program for Beating Depression and Regaining Your Emotional and Physical Health”, states:

Scientists now consider thyroid hormone one of the major “players” in brain chemistry disorders. And as with any brain chemical disorder, until treated correctly, thyroid hormone imbalance has serious effects on the patient’s emotions and behavior.

Thyroid hormones thyroxine (T4, as the storage hormone) and triiodothyronine (T3, as the converted and direct active hormone) not only play a part in the health of your metabolic endocrine, nervous and immune system, they in turn have an important role in the health and optimal functioning of your brain, including your cognitive function, mood, ability to concentrate, memory, attention span, and emotions. On her website, Christiane Northrup, MD states that T3 “is actually a bona fide neurotransmitter that regulates the action of serotonin, norepinephrine, and GABA (gamma aminobutyric acid), an inhibitory neurotransmitter that is important for quelling anxiety.” She also states that “If you don’t have enough T3, or if its action is blocked, an entire cascade of neurotransmitter abnormalities may ensue and can lead to mood and energy changes, including depression.”