About Lithium

Lithium is a type of medicine known as a mood stabiliser. It's used to treat mood disorders such as:

• mania (feeling highly excited, overactive or distracted)
• hypo-mania (similar to mania, but less severe)
• regular periods of depression, where treatment with other medicines has not worked
• bipolar disorder, where your mood changes between feeling very high (mania) and very low (depression)

Lithium can also help reduce aggressive or self-harming behaviour.

Lithium is available on prescription.

It comes as regular tablets or slow-release tablets (lithium carbonate). Brand names for the tablets include Priadel, Camcolit and Liskonum. It also comes as a liquid that you swallow (lithium citrate). Common brands of lithium liquid are Priadel and Li-liquid.

Key facts

• Lithium may take several weeks or months to work.
• Common side effects of lithium are feeling or being sick, diarrhoea, a dry mouth and a metallic taste in the mouth.
• You'll have regular blood tests to check how much lithium is in your blood. These results will be recorded in your lithium record book.
• You'll be given a lithium alert card to keep with you at all times. In an emergency, this will let health professionals know you're taking lithium.
• Try to avoid a low-sodium (low-salt) diet as this can increase the levels of lithium in your blood and increase the chance of getting side effects.

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