ABSTRACT

What accounts for the fascination with lithium in neuropsychiatry? The role of the guinea pig in its serendipitous discovery as an antimanic agent, the subsequent establishment of lithium as the ‘gold standard’ of treatment in bipolar disorder in humans and the protean neuroendocrine manifestations of treatment are well supported by the breadth of material in this monograph. Perhaps more than any of these, however, it is the fact that a naturally occurring element rather than an engineered biopharmaceutical remains the first-line treatment for patients with bipolar disorder. This is truly remarkable in this age of ‘designer drugs’.