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Overview
Manic-depressive illness exchanges stability and calm for fleeting euphoria and energy. It may reward those who have it with creative minds, while undermining their ability or opportunity to apply that creativity.
Lithium has restored the lives of an untold number of individuals and brought to life their dreams. It is the simplest medicinal agent available, and its ability to alleviate the signs and symptoms of this enigmatic disease makes it quite intriguing. In addition, many pragmatic issues make it essential to investigate. It is nearly as dualistic as the disease it treats, because there is a minuscule difference between the healing and the destructive powers of lithium.
Lithium: Actions and Mechanisms begins by exploring the therapeutic and toxic actions of lithium. Discussions incorporate mechanistic pearls to provide a clear and rational understanding of lithium's clinical actions. The author then investigates basic aspects of lithium's action on first messengers, second messengers, and membranes. This section integrates basic data and theoretical models as well as clinical pearls to provide a clear understanding of lithium's cellular effects. The epilogue combines all the divergent information into one coherent measurement of lithium's clinical action.
Lithium: Actions and Mechanisms is unique because it critically reviews major mechanistic theories of lithium actions and combines basic mechanisms with clinical application. This approach provides clinicians and scientists with a greater understanding of lithium. Because the first half is clinical and the second half is basic, it is also an excellent instructional tool for students and residents.
American Psychiatric Publishing
The book contains black-and-white illustrations.
Editorials
From The Critics
Reviewer: Jeffrey S. Ross, MD(Rush University Medical Center)Description: This is the first book on the action and mechanisms of lithium in a series of published collaborative symposia known as the Progress in Psychiatry series.
Purpose: The purpose is to publish the contents of an APA symposia of the same name to highlight some of the diverse viewpoints held by the book's many authors. Although these objectives may be worthwhile with a more controversial and academically challenging topic, they clearly fall short of expectations with a topic such as the use of lithium, a compound that has been exhaustively studied for many decades and with which no ground-breaking research has recently been conducted.
Audience: According to the author, the book is written for a varied audience ranging from the novice clinician to the veteran practitioner. In fact, there appears to be a duality about the book that makes the target audience unclear. The first half focuses exclusively on clinical issues, which should be mostly a review for the average psychiatrist, whereas the second half shifts dramatically to a basic science focus, which is clinically not useful.
Features: The book consists of mostly text with occasional tables and graphs that complement the text. The references cluster in the decades of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s when the majority of research on lithium was published. The author's style of including references in parentheses after each new idea only serves to disrupt the flow of the text and makes the reading more cumbersome. The table of contents, index, and appearance are merely adequate.
Assessment: The book does a commendable job on a general literature review of lithium. Of concern is the current usefulness of such a topic because most of the critical research has long since come and gone. The clinical material, which constitutes only 41 of the 92 pages, is nothing more than a thorough literature review and is very repetitive of any of the numerous general psychopharmacology textbooks available. The basic science chapters may be useful to the psychiatric researcher working with lithium, but the book offers little other benefit. It is difficult to recommend purchase of this book.
Jeffrey S. Ross
This is the first book on the action and mechanisms of lithium in a series of published collaborative symposia known as the Progress in Psychiatry series. The purpose is to publish the contents of an APA symposia of the same name to highlight some of the diverse viewpoints held by the book's many authors. Although these objectives may be worthwhile with a more controversial and academically challenging topic, they clearly fall short of expectations with a topic such as the use of lithium, a compound that has been exhaustively studied for many decades and with which no ground-breaking research has recently been conducted. According to the author, the book is written for a varied audience ranging from the novice clinician to the veteran practitioner. In fact, there appears to be a duality about the book that makes the target audience unclear. The first half focuses exclusively on clinical issues, which should be mostly a review for the average psychiatrist, whereas the second half shifts dramatically to a basic science focus, which is clinically not useful. The book consists of mostly text with occasional tables and graphs that complement the text. The references cluster in the decades of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s when the majority of research on lithium was published. The author's style of including references in parentheses after each new idea only serves to disrupt the flow of the text and makes the reading more cumbersome. The table of contents, index, and appearance are merely adequate. The book does a commendable job on a general literature review of lithium. Of concern is the current usefulness of such a topic because most of the critical research has long since come andgone. The clinical material, which constitutes only 41 of the 92 pages, is nothing more than a thorough literature review and is very repetitive of any of the numerous general psychopharmacology textbooks available. The basic science chapters may be useful to the psychiatric researcher working with lithium, but the book offers little other benefit. It is difficult to recommend purchase of this book.Booknews
Integrates the biological mechanisms of lithium with its wide clinical use for flattening the cycles of manic-depressive patients. El-Mallakh (psychiatry and behavioral sciences, U. of Louisville, Kentucky) critically reviews the prevailing mechanism theories, describes the metal's action on first and second messengers and membranes, and relates that action to the observed and experienced effect on the patient. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)2 Stars from Doody