Lithium has been a gold standard in the treatment of bipolar disorder (BD) for several decades. Despite a general reduction in the use of lithium over the past several years, it is effective in the management of both manic and depressive episodes in BD and continues to be recommended as a first-line mood stabilizer. This review provides an overview of the pharmacology of lithium and highlights ...

Lithium is the treatment for acute mania and bipolar disorders. Ever since its introduction in the psychiatric arsenal, case reports of toxicity have been appearing in the literature at regular intervals. This study was thus carried out to study the presentation and associated features of lithium toxicity. In this retrospective study, case record files of all patients suspected to have develope...

BACKGROUND Although psychiatric diagnostic systems have conceptualized mania as a discrete phenomenon, appropriate latent structure investigations testing this conceptualization are lacking. In contrast to these diagnostic systems, several influential theories of mania have suggested a continuous conceptualization. The present study examined whether mania has a continuous or discrete latent str...

BACKGROUND DSM-5 portrays mania as unitary despite evidence of distinct symptom clusters. Studies investigating the structure of mania have been inconsistent, in part because many relied on instruments not designed for this question. The present work used a clinical interview designed for structural analysis in order to identify and validate subdimensions specific to mania symptoms. METHODS P...

Psychotic-like experiences (PLEs) are subclinical forms of psychosis commonly experienced in the general population. The nature PLEs has yet to be clearly defined, mood and sleep disturbances may two predictors. Sleep disturbance increases paranoia hallucinations experimental studies, insomnia is considered a longitudinal precursor psychosis. Mood including depression mania, which can induced b...

OBJECTIVE Mixed episodes have been described as more severe than manic episodes, especially due to their longer duration and their association with higher rates of suicide attempts, hospitalization and psychotic symptoms. The purpose of this study was to compare the severity between mixed and pure manic episodes according to DSM-IV criteria, through the evaluation of sociodemographic data and c...

head trauma and brain injury are common causes of emergency cases, and predispose multiple psychiatric complications. the head trauma, itself, often occurs after some psychiatric disorders, like mood or substance related disorders. so, the complex interaction of these factors often causes difficulties in diagnosis and management of the patients. the side effects of surgical and medical treatmen...

BACKGROUND To describe the clinical course and treatment patterns over 24 months of patients experiencing an acute manic/mixed episode within the standard course of care. METHODS EMBLEM was a 2-year European prospective, observational study on outcomes of patients experiencing a manic/mixed episode. Adults with bipolar disorder were enrolled within the standard course of care as in/outpatient...