Finding Sanity: John Cade, lithium and the taming of bipolar disorder by Greg de Moore and Ann Westmore
Synopsis: The first biography of the ground breaking Australian doctor who discovered the first pharmacological treatment for mental illness.
For most of human history, mental illness has been largely untreatable. Sufferers lived their lives – if they survived – in and out of asylums, accumulating life’s wreckage around them.
In 1948, all that changed when an Australian doctor and recently returned prisoner of war, working alone in a disused kitchen, set about an experimental treatment for one of the scourges of mankind – manic depression, or bipolar disorder. That doctor was John Cade and in that small kitchen he stirred up a miracle.
John Cade discovered a treatment that has become the gold standard for bipolar disorder – lithium. It has stopped more people from committing suicide than a thousand help lines.
Lithium is the penicillin story of mental health – the first effective medication discovered for the treatment of a mental illness – and it is, without doubt, Australia’s greatest mental health story.
Published: September 2016 | ISBN: 9781760113704
Mini-bio: Greg de Moore is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry based at Sydney’s Westmead Hospital. Born in Melbourne of parents who migrated to Australia from Sri Lanka, Greg has lived in Sydney for over 20 years. – Allen & Unwin Bio
Mini-bio: Ann Westmore is an Honorary Fellow in the Health Humanities and Social Science Unit, School of Population and Global Health, the University of Melbourne. She came to the history of medicine and science through a degree in science and a previous career as a medical writer for a mass circulation newspaper. – Allen & Unwin Bio
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