Lithium has long been used as a psychotherapeutic drug, and treatment with lithium demonstrably reduces incidence of suicide. Lithium also occurs naturally in groundwater to varying degrees. This study explores the relative amount of Lithium in groundwater and suicide in 18 municipalities in Oita prefecture, Japan over a period running from 2002 to 2006. There are two principle findings:
1) There is a negative correlation between standardized (adjusted) suicide rates and the amount of lithium in the water; and
2) It does not take much lithium to produce this effect.
The study reports…
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