Bipolar Today

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A psychiatrist and former politician in Ireland, Dr. Moosajee Bhamjee, has suggested that lithium be added to the water supply in order to lower the suicide rate. He cites studies in Texas from 1990 and Japan from 2009 that show that the suicide rate drops when lithium is added to the water. He compares the adding of lithium to the water to the adding of fluoride, which is widely done in order to help prevent tooth decay. He is not the only psychiatrist to call for the addition of lithium to the water supply, as Professor Allan Young has written in the British Journal of Psychiatry that it could provide considerable benefits in approving mental health. More coverage can be found on The Guardian here.

Commentary

This is a terrible idea. Lithium is only useful for treating people with bipolar disorder, not everyone, so the analogy with fluoride simply doesn’t hold. Ireland would be better off with screening and treatment programs that target bipolar people directly, not provide bipolar medications to everyone, bipolar or not.

Another problem is that lithium is, like many medications, potentially dangerous. It can cause kidney damage, birth defects and weight gain. In order to not put so much lithium in the water supply that these effects would be unlikely to occur, the amount would need to be below therapeutic levels. I suppose the theory may be that a small amount of lithium can be therapeutic, but I challenge Dr. Bhamjee to find studies that show statistical significance of levels of lithium below which side effects do not occur.

Related posts:

1. Adding Lithium Can Reduce Antipsychotic Dosages: Study
2. New Discovery May Explain How Lithium Works
3. Lithium May Fix Damaged Nerves
4. Some Antipsychotics Better For Acute Mania: The Lancet
5. Illegal Use of Seroquel (Quetiapine) Increases