Lithium has been around for so long that the Romans and Greeks used to send sufferers of "Active melancholia" to specific shrines where they were to drink and bathe in special spring waters.
Those spring waters were (much) later found to be extremely rich in lithium salts.
Lithium is still the gold standard for tx of classic BiPolar (BP).
My psychiatrist was not happy to find that I can't take lithium due to residual kidney damage from a childhood illness (can't concentrate urine and hence get dehydrated very easily)
