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The Essential Guide to Lithium Treatment pp 45–60Cite as

Maintenance Treatment with Lithium

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Abstract

Patients suffering from bipolar disorder experience an episodic illness with the risk of affective recurrences throughout most of their lives. Interepisodic subsyndromal mood symptoms and cognitive impairment may also occur in a proportion of patients with bipolar disorder. There is substantial intra- and interindividual variability in symptom severity, duration and number of episodes, degree of recovery between episodes, and the polarity pattern. Given the wide range of bipolar disorder’s phenotypic expression, long-term treatment presents a major challenge for clinicians. Despite the availability of modern treatments, full, sustained recovery is difficult to achieve. By virtue of its recurrent nature and depending on the subtype of the disorder, patients have symptoms for approximately half of their lives, a finding that highlights the importance of optimizing long-term treatment and ameliorating affective symptomatology.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Technische Universtät Dresden, University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus, Dresden, Germany

    Michael Bauer

  2. Geffen School of Medicine, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Michael Gitlin

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  1. Michael Bauer
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  2. Michael Gitlin
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Bauer, M., Gitlin, M. (2016). Maintenance Treatment with Lithium. In: The Essential Guide to Lithium Treatment. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31214-9_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31214-9_5

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