Viral Infection and Psychiatric Disorders

Abstract

A psychiatric population of 94 inpatients and 12 outpatients was investigated on referral to a psychiatric unit in a general hospital for serum antibody titres to several viruses by a complement fixation technique. Of the total population studied, only eight were considered to have antibody titres of possible significance. This result would appear to indicate that viral infection does not play a major part in the causation or precipitation of psychiatric disorders.

Are some cases of psychosis caused by microbial agents? A review of the evidence

“…Psychiatric research on infectious agents continued sporadically, mostly in Eastern Europe 7,8 and Russia, 9 but after the onset of the Cold War, these studies were not widely known in the West. In the 1970s, there was renewed interest in infectious agents in Western Europe [10][11][12] and the United States, 13,14 culminating in a 1983 World Health Organization symposium, 'Research on the Viral Hypothesis of Mental Disorders'. 15 Since that time, interest in this research area has steadily increased.…”