Lithium treatment in post-psychotic depression.

Six of eleven drug-free schizophrenic patients who were depressed following remission of their illness showed a significant decrease in their depressive symptomatology during a double-blind, placebo substitution lithium trial. Traditional indicators of prognosis did not predict lithium response in this small sample; the schizophrenic patients tolerated the lithium well. Lithium should be studied further in a larger patient sample as an adjunct in the treatment of post-psychotic depression, which frequently is treatment resistant.