Psychiatric illness and non-cancer hysterectomy

Forty-nine randomly selected women who received hysterectomy for reasons other than cancer were studied preoperatively with systematic interviews and record reviews, and were diagnosed using the explicit criteria of Feighner, et al. Fifty-seven percent were found to be psychiatrically ill, with 27% suffering from hysteria (Briquet's Syndrome), and 18% from primary depression. Recently some investigators have attributed a 'post-hysterectomy syndrome' characterized by multiple psychologic and somatic symptoms to the surgery itself. However, a high pre-operative prevalence of psychiatric illness, particularly hysteria, must be considered when evaluating symptoms in a post-hysterectomy population.