Minute Levels of Lithium in Public Water Supply Decrease Suicide
Blüml et al. reported in the Journal of Psychiatric Research in 2013 that among 226 counties in Texas, the ones with higher trace levels of lithium in the public water supply had lower rates of completed suicide in the general population than did the counties with lower lithium levels. The naturally occurring lithium levels in public water supplies in the geographic regions described in this study ranged from 2.8 to 219 ?g/l or 0.00043 to 0.0315 mmol/l (much lower than the levels used to treat bipolar disorder).
This is the fourth positive study describing this effect, including two in Texas, one in Japan, and one in Austria. (One study from part of England failed to show this relationship, though levels measured in that study had a much lower and restricted range, from less than 1 to 21 ?g/l.) The most recent studies have collected more water samples and used more sophisticated statistical analyses to control for socioeconomic and a variety of other demographic effects on suicide.
Editor’s Note: Why higher trace levels of lithium occurring naturally in the water supply should have this anti-suicide effect in the general population is unknown, but it is a fascinating finding. It also gives indirect credence to the clinical findings in patients with unipolar and bipolar disorder that lithium (albeit in the much higher levels achieved with medication) has anti-suicide effects.
