The APA took the initiative to promote the idea of Psychologists being able to write prescriptions. This is what started the whole controversy over the matter. Patients can find much relief from their symptoms when using some form of medication for their illness. We spend a lot of time researching the medications before we use them. We test items such as how well they relieve the symptoms the patient experiences and how likely they are to experience an episode again.
Lithium has been proven to be effective for both manic and depressive episodes (Tanious & Malhi, 2011). Has also been helpful in lowering the suicide rate in bipolar patients (Johnson, Wang, Sun, McEwen, Chatterji &Young, 2009). Unfortunately, lithium does have a downside. The delay in effectiveness can be a long one. For manic episodes it can take 6 to 10 days for full effectiveness (Tanious & Malhi, 2011). In a depressive state it can take even longer; with an average between 6 to 8 weeks (Tanious & Malhi, 2011)! A study on rats showed that lithium can help reduce stress in the brain, the amygdala to be exact (Johnson, Wang, Sun, McEwen, Chattarji, & Young, 2009). The lithium helped in the rats that were given stress, but there was no affect on the others (Johnson, Wang, Sun, McEwen, Chattarji, & Young, 2009).
Quetiapine is often mixed with lithium to treat bipolar patients. One study combined it with lithium and a similar drug known as divalproex to test the drug as a mood stabilizer (Vieta, Suppes, Eggens, Persson, Paulson, Brecher, etc., 2008). The study showed that adding the Quetiapine delayed the times between episodes meaning it was helpful in stabilizing the mood of the patient longer (Vieta, Suppes, Eggens, Persson, Paulson, Brecher, etc., 2008). A 4 year study was done to see which medication was the best as a mood stabilizer. There were 6 treatment groups and each individual was evaluated once a month during the study (Altamura, Mundo, Dell’Osso, Tacchini, Buoli, & Calabrese, 2008). It was discovered that Quetiapine alone was very effective, but the most effective was the combination of lithium and quetiapine (Altamura, Mundo, Dell’Osso, Tacchini, Buoli, & Calabrese, 2008).
There are two types of Antidepressants used in this study; tricyclic and Non-tricyclic (Koszewska & Rybakowski, 2009). More mood conversions were linked to women rather than men (Koszewska & Rybakowski, 2009).
A study was done using Risperidone in two forms; an oral medication and an long-acting injections (Deeks, 2010). The long-acting injection was proven to be very beneficial as a maintenance treatment for bipolar disorder (Deeks, 2010). Risperidone combined with lithium is also very effective (Deeks, 2010).
A study was done using lithium and venlafaxine to see which one the phenomenon was more likely on (Amsterdam & Shults, 2009). It showed us that tachyphylaxis was likely to happen in both treatments equally (Amsterdam & Shults, 2009). This shows us that we need to watch out for tachyphylaxis and that most of these medications are not meant to be used for a long period of time (Amsterdam & Shults, 2009). They would need to be altered when signs of tolerance were evident.
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