Study designs of evaluations included in the review
Articles that scored more than 70 on the quality assessment were included in the review. Controlled and uncontrolled studies were included.
Specific interventions included in the review
Lithium taken for between 2 weeks and 9 years.
Participants included in the review
Patients with manic depressive illness, one trial also included alcoholic patients and people with schizophrenic disorder, another trial included those with depression.
Outcomes assessed in the review
Short term memory, long term memory, vigilance, reaction time, EEG tests, WMS tests (definition not provided), Halstead test, Reitan battery tests, trailmaking, memory tasks, 20 word task, Benton tests, story recall, Stroop 'digit span' test, Tachistoscope, Tapping, Steering task and 14 and 16 word tasks.
How were decisions on the relevance of primary studies made?
The authors do not state how the papers were selected for the review, or how many of the authors performed the selection.