Yes I may sometimes get suicidal, but lithium in my water supply? No thanks! It’s a ‘Dangerous Idea’ over at Big Think. It’s been shown in a study that people in Texas who have natural low levels of lithium in their water supply are at a lesser risk of suicide than the general population who do not. The proposal is to put lithium in the water supply, much the same way as fluoride is, to help reduce the risk of suicide in the overall population. By the way, it seems it also reduces crime and drug addiction… What do you think? Should people like me be drugged via the water supply to reduce the risk of us committing suicide? Or to cut crime and drug addiction come to that? It’s a very scary proposal if you ask me… I left my comments on Big Think, feel free to leave yours here, or there 
Image from George Orwell.
Okay, having read the article here are my points (can’t figure out how to log in on that website):
1) It’s not a big enough trial sample – 14 to 8 suicides on average. You’d need to try it on a bigger suicide risk sample (obvioulsy with a control group), but even that wouldn’t be entirely accurate because there are far more other factors as to why people do or do not commit suicide. Maybe one person’s job picks up at the last minute or maybe someone attempts but is found and sectioned. Also, do 14 people commit suicide EVERY year without fail? Or is it variable? Sounds like it as you’re having to take averages. And over how many years? Were other things going on in the state? Were psychiatric hospitals getting better, was there a rising awareness of mental health issues and how to cope? This doesn’t seem to be enough to base anything on if we don’t know.
2) Isn’t lithium really really addictive?? Let’s stop them getting addicted to drugs…. by making them addicted to drugs! Hurrah!
3) Comparing it to flouride is veeeeery silly because other than the fact that you’re adding it to drinking water the situations are entirely different. As I have already mentioned, there are lots of reasons, both psychological and physiological, as to why people commit suicide, and to me this lithium business just sounds like Americans trying to cop out on better mental health care. Flouride, despite what people thought in the fifties, doesn’t control your mind and thinking processes. Lithium is well known as an element that DOES.
4) If we are to go by this slightly mad trial data, only 6 out of 100,000 people benefitted from this extra lithium – people who probably should have gone to the doctor anyway. Lots of people benefitted from the flouride, again it just sounds like a cop out on good mental healthcare.