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by aidenn0 3069 days ago
too bad lithium is such a hard drug to administer (it's psychoactive at doses very close to harmful doses, so usually there needs to be monitoring of the levels of lithium in the blood)
2 comments

Long term use of lithium may also lead to kidney problems[1][2]. Monitoring of kidney function is also needed over a long time[3].

[1]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/25735990/

[2]https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S008525381...

[3]https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/bipolar-disorder/treatment/#li...

My mother has bipolar and takes lithium, it's scary stuff, the effective dose is so close to the toxicity dose that she has has to get her bloods checked every couple of weeks.

The stuff works for her though, well enough that she sometimes feels she doesn't need it because she's OK, historically things have gone bad when that happens.

Scary disease especially as they still unsure of the cause, we took part in a medical study 20ish years ago as they wanted siblings with a parent with bipolar so they could look for genetic causes/pre-dispositions.