Should We Add Lithium to Water to Help Prevent Suicide?

What’s the story?

• A number of eminent psychiatrists believe the U.S. could save tens of thousands of lives a year by putting small amounts of lithium – a psychiatric drug prescribed for depression and bipolar disorder – in our drinking water.
• Before you leave “absolutely not!” comments below, know it’s too late: because lithium is an element that occurs naturally in the Earth’s crust, small quantities already make their way into tap water.
• This, Vox explained, got researchers thinking:

"Are places with more lithium in the water healthier, mentally? Do places with more lithium have less depression or bipolar or — most importantly of all — fewer suicides?”

• The answer, according to a 2014 review of studies, was yes.
• “In general, in the United States, lithium levels are much higher in the Northeast and East Coast and very low in the Mountain West,” Nassir Ghaemi, the Tufts psychiatry professor who co-authored the review, explained to Vox’s Future Perfect podcast. “And suicide rates track that exactly — much lower suicide rates in the Northeast, and the highest rates of suicide are in the Mountain West.”
• Ghaemi said that high-lithium areas have suicide rates 50 to 60 percent lower than low-lithium areas. “If you apply that 50 to 60 percent reduction to the US, where about 45,000 people total died by suicide in 2016,” Vox wrote, “you get a total number of lives saved at around 22,500 to 27,000 a year.”

What are critics saying?

• Not all researchers share Ghaemi’s enthusiasm.
• A recently-updated list of lithium studies reveals that while many studies find benefits to trace amounts of lithium, just as many find no impact on suicides. A 2017 Danish study “found no significant indication of an association between increasing…lithium exposure level and decreasing suicide rate.”
• And though it’s not suicide, Vox mentions a 2018 study, based on healthcare claims data in the U.S., which “found that greater amounts of trace lithium in the water didn’t predict lower diagnoses of bipolar disorder or dementia.”

What do you think?

Should the U.S. research placing trace amounts of lithium in our drinking water? Would you drink lithium-laced water? Take action and tell your reps, then share your thoughts below.

—Josh Herman

(Photo Credit: iStockphoto.com / turk_stock_photographer)