Mood stabilisers

Meet the patient

A 29-year-old woman is admitted in her second manic episode — three nights without sleep, spending thousands she does not have, grandiose, irritable. She is on the oral contraceptive pill but admits she forgets it most days. Her mother took lithium for years and "swore by it".[1][16]

Three questions land on the ward round at once, and the wrong answer to any of them fails the station: which pole are you treating, can she become pregnant, and can this service actually deliver the monitoring? Everything below exists to answer those three questions at consultant depth.[1][16][21]

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