[Psychiatric disorders in elderly patients caused by disturbed calcium metabolism]

We report on three patients admitted to psychiatric hospital due to mental disorder in the context of marked pathology of calcium metabolism: a 69 years old male patient with known major depression developed pronounced deterioration of his mental state with distinct hypercalcemia due to parathyroid adenoma, a 90 years old male patient came to treatment with organic affective und delirious symptomatology caused by severe hypercalcemia due to bronchial carcinoma, and a 79 years old female patient was admitted for mixed depressive and anxiety syndrome with profound hypocalcemia and -magnesaemia originating in malabsorption syndrome due to Crohn's disease. Although all patients had received general medical care previously the relevance of their metabolic disorders with regard to their psychopathology had not been ascertained. In all cases treatment of disturbed electrolyte metabolism resulted in an at least temporary improvement of their psychiatric symptomatology. Our case reports referring to elderly patients with multimorbidity underscore the etiological relevance of disturbed calcium metabolism with regard to a broad spectrum of psychiatric syndromes.