Lithium In Water "Curbs Suicide" 458
SpuriousLogic writes "Drinking water which contains lithium may reduce the risk of suicide, a Japanese study suggests. Researchers compared levels of lithium in drinking water to suicide rates in the prefecture of Oita, which has a population of more than one million. The suicide rate was significantly lower in those areas with the highest levels of lithium, they wrote in the British Journal of Psychiatry. And I was only worried about fluoridation affecting my precious bodily fluids before ..."
Not surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
Concidering that Lithium is used to treat a number of mental illnesses like bipolar and depression that should be expected. Here in the US there are many living with undiagnosed depression and we are seen as a tollerant and accepting society in regards to mental health. In Japan there is far less social acceptance (at least when I lived there, maybe its changed) so I would expect and even higher percentage of non treated people.
me two. (Score:3, Insightful)
(Hey, it worked for Inconvenient Truth. :P)
Anyone else massively creeped out by this? (Score:4, Insightful)
lithium is well known (Score:5, Insightful)
for its ability to suppress suicidal urges. It's significantly more effective at suicide reduction than any other drug available. For this reason, it's still commonly used for treating people with bipolar. Ironically, it's also one of the more toxic drugs and easy to commit suicide with.
Having drugs that reduce the incidence of suicide is extremely important especially for bipolar. Post diagnosis, there is approximately a 15 to 20% suicide rate for bipolar patients. I was almost in that 15 to 20% I know very clearly why people try to end their lives and I also know that if they're not terminally ill, it can and should be prevented.
If a friend or family member is seriously down, withdraws from social circles (and not just because they're on a bataan death march coding project), start giving away belongings or are talking about how it hurts too much to stay alive, ask them these three questions.
Do you have a plan to kill yourself? (Ask how)
do you have the materials to kill yourself with?
Do you have a place/time for killing yourself?
A single yes means stay close, call mental health in the morning. Two yeses or more means get the person to the emergency room and tell the doctor about these questions and responses. If the person will not go with you, call the emergency room, tell them what's going on and they will send emergency personnel to help.
Almost all people thinking of suicide will give you signals and, even though they may not show it, want someone to stop them. Most importantly, if you try and they kill themselves anyway, don't blame yourself.
Re:Anyone else massively creeped out by this? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
Get your propaganda goggles on for this one.
Unethical (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not surprising (Score:3, Insightful)
Might as well just ad Prozium to the water supply.
Re:Does not address core problem (Score:1, Insightful)
You could try Zen Buddhism. I went from having to do wacked out shit all the time to get my highs to being able to enjoy previously boring stuff like just paying attention to my breath or eating a salad.
Re:me two. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm usually not much of a grammar Nazi, but you should probably realize that prescribe and proscribe are almost antonyms.
Re:Anyone ever watch that Joss Whedon movie? (Score:1, Insightful)
No, sorry I'm a little too old to watch teen films/shows.
Re:Does not address core problem (Score:2, Insightful)
How do you make life not suck so much? Seriously -- is it better pay? Free sex? More leisure time? I am depressed about 90% of the time and have been since I was 16 (I'm 40 now). I work part-time (about 3 days/week on average), make a (barely) six figure income, and my wife is bi. I'm not making up a word of this. I should feel incredibly happy, but instead, a life-long sense of despair prevents exactly that.
I think there is a good part of depression that is due to external forces. I can say that when I was poor, it was worse. But a large part of depression is wholly internal and no amount of "making life suck less" is going to change that.
Perhaps if people didn't generally spend 1/7 of their life in a large building with a well-dressed man telling them they're going to hell because they were born a bad person, they'd feel better.
Better pay, free sex, and more leisure time are nice, but won't make you as happy as realizing that you really ARE a good person and accepting it. Accepting and living with it is probably more difficult in this sadist society.
Re:lithium is well known (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod parent up.
People who intend to commit suicide tend to talk about it. It means they need help, please try and get them to it/it to them.
Re:Does not address core problem (Score:1, Insightful)
Bullshit. 95% of today's teens are atheist, and they still kill themselves. Christians are actually probably less likely to commit suicide, simply because it's considered a sin.
Re:Unethical (Score:5, Insightful)
So can we ethically allow mind-altering substances that are naturally present to exist in the water supply? It's a tricky business the moment you cease drinking water from rivers or springs and start piping it anywhere. The people piping it suddenly have an ethical obligation regarding its contents.
This study was to identify potential NATURAL contaminants that alter emotional disposition. Nothing about changing the water supply. It is potentially interesting, in that it may change our understanding of suicidal behaviour from place to place, and our understanding of something as simple as the water supply's varied social effects.
When you drink tap water, you (presumably a healthy person) are consuming a substance that may or may not have mind-altering substances just naturally. Almost all chemicals have some negligible effect on the mind, some moreso than others. Your region probably hasn't been analysed for lithium concentrations; you could be in a naturally higher region for all you know. Are you being given a mind-altering substance without your consent? Quite possibly.
Or to put it another way... There are more shades of grey than there are in your morality.
Stop tagging correlationisnotcausation (Score:4, Insightful)
People, please stop tagging every study on Slashdot with correlationisnotcausation. I know it's standard here to believe this community is somehow more enlightened than all others, but do you really think that researchers became researchers without being able to ask simple questions? In fact, in an idealized study, it's not even a relevant question!
Moreover, this moronic practice is especially stupid for this story because the neurological effects of lithium salts have been explored for decades. This is not a revolutionary study by any means. So unless years and years of studies have gone horribly wrong, then yes, in this case, correlation does, in fact, imply causation.
Re: Lithium is used to fight bipolar disorder (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Anyone else massively creeped out by this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Please could you cut it with the FUD? Evil politicians are neither communists or capitalists, they are fascists, they'll pay lip service to anyone as long as they can have as much power and money as possible.
Re:lithium is well known (Score:3, Insightful)
I also know that if they're not terminally ill, it can and should be prevented.
Care to back up that assertion of moral authority? My body, my choice.
Re:Anyone else massively creeped out by this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is being calm equated to being a zombie or being in a herd? Im certainly not advocating spiking the water with anything but fluoride, but its interesting how we react to news like this. We completely accept the speedy society. Hell, politicans and business want us to be stressed out and speedy. They want us to gulp down more afternoon coffee, red bull, bawls, soda, sugar, etc. It makes you more productive right? So, now youre doing the work of two people and catching up on your deadlines. Its not their concern that youre slowly developing heart disease or that youre anxious all the time and finally end up crashing around 3 or 4pm only to go home and veg out in front of the TV until bedtime to start the cycle over again. Theyre just happy they didnt have to hire an extra person in your department.
So, when someone suggests that calm might be better for you socially and medically, suddenly we're frothing at the mouth and jonsing for starbucks. I think this says a lot about modern society. Personally, I have no patience with the speedy types. You know, the over-worked person at your company who is on her third starbucks before 10am and wont stop talking your ear off or is buzzing around like a loon at all your meetings. Yeah, I want to work on a project with her.
Perhaps there's something to being in a calm town, regardless whether its water causing it or just people who want to be calm and happy instead of anxious and speedy.
Re:lithium is well known (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Lithium is used to fight bipolar disorder (Score:4, Insightful)
"Why there haven't been studies using Lithium isotopes to trace the effects and identify the specific class(es) of condition(s) Lithium can deal with and which it can't, I don't know."
Because there is no patent on it, and thus no protected revenue stream.
In other words, not worth doing unless you possess a soul.
Re:Anyone ever read that Stephen King story? (Score:1, Insightful)
"Where they spike the water to cure aggression in people? It doesn't end well."
Who's to say curing aggression would have the same side effects as in stephen kings story? Real life is much more mundance and predictable, that's what makes it REAL LIFE(tm)
Re:Not surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is, too little of X mineral is bad, but too much is also bad.
We should all be getting hair analysis done to determine what minerals we need. Or maybe we should just live life - that works too for most people.
Re:Does not address core problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny thing about living through stressful difficult times is you learn to be content with what you have. I live in the third world under an undemocratic government and have a much lower standard of living than you guys, but I'm quite happy.
I'd say, its the old problem of the more you have, the more you want. Happiness has nothing to do with material wealth or possessions. Its a state of mind.
Re:me two. (Score:3, Insightful)
You wouldn't proscribe medicine to someone who isn't ill, would you?
Too much of something good can be very bad. Take Vitamin A [wikipedia.org] for example. If you don't have enough, you get troubles with skin, bones, vision, even your DNA. Too much can make you lose hair, have the shits like you've been sucking on a water faucet in Mexico, anemia and so on.
You want to take exactly the right amount of a stuff to stay healthy. And for a healthy person, the exactly right amount of a drug is zero.
Re:Stop tagging correlationisnotcausation (Score:4, Insightful)
People, please stop tagging every study on Slashdot with correlationisnotcausation. I know it's standard here to believe this community is somehow more enlightened than all others, but do you really think that researchers became researchers without being able to ask simple questions? In fact, in an idealized study, it's not even a relevant question!
Moreover, this moronic practice is especially stupid for this story because the neurological effects of lithium salts have been explored for decades. This is not a revolutionary study by any means. So unless years and years of studies have gone horribly wrong, then yes, in this case, correlation does, in fact, imply causation.
Actually, that's incorrect and reinforces that the correlationisnotcausation tag should still be used for these articles, because obviously even us intelligent Slashdotters can get confused!
While one might be able to say that lithium causes decreased suicides based on other data from other studies, one cannot infer from this study that the low lithium levels in the water (which would presumably not cause lithium blood levels in the range currently targeted for therapy) are what's responsible for the decreased rates. One can only claim correlation.
This is due to the possibility of confounding variables (for example, do wealthier neighborhoods tend to have more pure drinking water?).
Even if you control for all the factors that you know about that could cause such misinterpretation of the data, there is still a very real possibility of an unknown confounder (e.g., could there be another substance in the water that tends to track with lithium levels, and could it be that other substance that is the suicide-protective agent?)
Re:Anyone ever read that Stephen King story? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:me two. (Score:5, Insightful)
Patent? Lithium [wikipedia.org]? It's an element on the periodic table. How could it possibly have ever had a patent filed against it?
Because the actual drug isn't the only thing you can get a patent on. There's a fair bit of technology behind the manufacture and operation of pills and other drug-delivery systems. If a manufacturer managed to come up with a better way to deliver a clinical dose, I'd think it could be patented. And maybe you can't patent an element, but I suspect (given the USPTO's penchant for issuing marginal if not outright bogus patents lately) you could patent that element as a treatment for a specific ailment. Don't confuse what should be unpatentable for what actually isn't. Not anymore.
Re:lithium is well known (Score:3, Insightful)
I also know that if they're not terminally ill, it can and should be prevented.
Care to back up that assertion of moral authority? My body, my choice.
Nonsense. People that truly want to commit suicide will do it if they can. There's nothing you can do about it, and odds are, you'll never know anything until after it happens.
That's not the case with most attempted suicides, so this is NOT a "my body, my choice" scenario. An untimely (or even a timely) death has effects upon others that go far beyond the one individual that died. The one who suicided is beyond caring, but many other people can be damaged or destroyed by their "choice". Unless you are a completely isolated individual with no-one for whom you care (or who cares about you) then taking your own life is a selfish, destructive act. Most of us are not islands and while we may not see any value in our continued existence, others probably do.
Look, just because a person isn't able to perceive any solution to their problems other than suicide does not imply that that is the answer they truly want! If you really want to help them, give them another option, another choice. Don't just stand by while they snuff themselves out.
In any event, if someone reaches out to you and you do nothing, then you are an insufficient person. Do the rest of humanity a favor and off yourself first.
We won't stop you. It's your choice, after all.
Re:Anyone else massively creeped out by this? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not being calm that bothers me, it's the idea of creating and maintaining an extremely unhealthy society that naturally drives people over the edge and then suggesting a pharmaceutical band-aid as the 'solution'.
Western society has lost the wisdom of "haste makes waste" It values the snap decision even when there is plenty of time to think things through. Much of the workforce is kept much too "busy" for them to actually accomplish anything real.
The way we use mood stabilizers and anti-depressants is like "treating" a broken leg with massive amounts of morphine.
What's needed is more sleep and more true leisure time. Time spent in a mental fog because you're too wound up to sleep but too tired to think doesn't count. Big hint, when you've had enough sleep, you'll wake up without an alarm clock.
Mild to moderate depression and possibly even psychosis can be greatly improved by getting adequate sleep on a more or less regular schedule.
Re:Does not address core problem (Score:3, Insightful)
While what you say is true, it doesn't imply what I said is not true. I forget who said it, but some rich guy, when asked how much money was enough, answered, "just a little more.."
Chasing wealth to find happiness is a complete waste of time. And you will never be satisfied, if wealth is your only goal. You'll always want more.
This is why I will take a poor paying job in a research institute/university over some dead boring high paying 8-5 do the same thing every day job with a large salary(which I could easily get with my skills in this country). Because as long as I can live comfortably, I don't really care about the money. Maybe its just me.. but the truth is, I am actually happy. Strange as that may sound.