Schou, Mogens

Schou, Mogens. Lithium Treatment of Manic-Depressive Illness. 5th rev. ed. New York Basel, 1993. 

Despite this favorable result, lithium was hardly considered as a psychopharmaceutical for many years. There were a variety of reasons for this. Firstly, mania is not a very common psychosis and there is spontaneous remission in many cases. There were thus not so many occasions where lithium treatment was indicated. Secondly, lithium salts were considered to be toxic because for some time they had been given in excessive doses to patients with heart failure and in this way, had led to a number of fatalities (Cade, 1970). Thirdly, a few years after Cade s first publication psychiatrists attention had been claimed by chlorpromazine and the subsequent neuroleptics and antidepressants, thus explaining why lithium almost fell into oblivion. It was onl> in the 1960s that it once more attracted some interest, after the Danish psychiatrist Mogens Schou had shown that lithium salts were not only useful in the manic phase of manic depressive illness but also could prevent depressive episodes in patients suffering from bipolar psychoses. 

Modem psychiatric treatments were introduced in 1948, when lithium carbonate was discovered as a treatment for mania by Australian psychiatrist John F. Cade. After Cade s initial report, lithium treatment was principally developed in Denmark by Mogens Schou (1918-), beginning in 1954. After a decade of trials by these and other groups in the USA and abroad, the Psychiatric Association and the Lithium Task Force recommended lithium to the Food and Drug Administration for therapy of mania in 1969, 20 years after its discovery by Cade. In 1970, the FDA approved the prescription drug. A breakthrough had finally been achieved in the treatment and prevention of one of the world s major mental health problems in the form of manic depression, and the genetically related forms of recurrent depression. 

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