What Mental Illness Causes Elevated Levels of Cortisol?

Patients with depression, bipolar disorder and anxiety disorders have elevated cortisol, a hormone that controls blood pressure and metabolism, and increases in time of stress.

Depression

• During clinical depression, the body secretes excessive amounts of cortisol. Researchers disagree on whether high cortisol levels cause depression or if depression increases cortisol production. When clinical depression lifts, cortisol levels return to normal.

Anxiety Disorders

• Patients who suffer from panic attacks, social phobia, separation anxiety and generalized anxiety disorder have elevated levels of cortisol. In a 2003 study published in Neuropsychopharmacology journal, researchers from Leiden University, The Netherlands, examined how patients with post-traumatic stress disorder have high levels of cortisol when exposed to reminders of childhood trauma they experienced.

Bipolar Disorder

• According to a 2005 summary of bipolar disorder research by Brian Koehler, Ph.D., cortisol secretion increases just before the manic or hypomanic phase of bipolar disorder begins. He reports that the higher the cortisol level, the more severe the manic phase.

Continuously Elevated Levels

• Koehler contends that elevated cortisol levels likely are a symptom--as opposed to a cause--of bipolar disorder, as cortisol does not level out when bipolar patients are in recovery.

Overexposure

• Psychologist Mark Dombeck, Ph.D., who runs the Mental Help Net website, states in a 2006 article that extreme stress leads to overproduction of cortisol, with mood disorders as a result.