Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 January 2018
In psychiatry, lithium has been used mainly in the treatment of manic states and other forms of affective psychoses (Cade, 1949; Schou, 1956; Maggs, 1963; Baastrup, 1964). Strömgren (1965) puts forward the view that the usefulness of lithium is very questionable in the treatment of other psychiatric disturbances than affective disorders. Even earlier, Teulie et al. (1955) had found lithium to have a relatively weak therapeutic effect in schizophrenic, hallucinatory and epileptic psychoses. The Russian investigators, Mosketi et al. (1963), treated different kinds of psychotic disturbances by administering lithium iodide (0·5–1·0 g/die) intravenously. They found the effect of the drug to be highly favourable within 7 to 15 days, in some cases in 30 to 60 minutes. They obtained the best results in cases of paranoid-hallucinatory, confusional and depressive-paranoid psychoses. Compared with earlier observations, these results indicate a surprisingly favourable effect of lithium in non-affective psychoses.
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