There is a lot of interest in an article that just appeared in Biological Psychiatry about a new magnetic stimulation technique that may be associated with rapid antidepressant effects in both unipolar and bipolar depression. Researchers at McLean Hospital were studying Low Frequency Magnetic Stimulation as a way of imaging the brains of bipolar patients and discovered that many of …
Lithium Treats Bipolar Depression
In a special symposium on bipolar disorder at the 2014 meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, researcher Mike Bauer reviewed a new meta-analysis that showed lithium not only has significant effects in preventing manias, but also depressions. Mike Bauer is currently the Director and Executive Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, and the Physician-in-Chief, at the Psychiatric Hospital …
Antidepressants are not Effective for Bipolar Depression
Mark Frye, Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the Mayo Clinic, gave a lecture on antidepressants in bipolar illness at the 2014 meeting of the American Psychiatric Association. The newest data from meta-analyses indicate that traditional antidepressants that are effective in unipolar depression are not effective in bipolar depression. Some patient groups, especially those with very early onset depression …
Lithium versus Quetiapine for Bipolar Disorder
In a recent study comparing the efficacy of lithium and the second-generation antipsychotic quetiapine, the drugs had remarkably similar results. Researcher Andrew Nierenberg et al. presented the results at the 2014 meeting of the American Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology. By the end of the 6-month study period, most patients had improved substantially, but only about a quarter of each group became …