As you can imagine, mood stabilizing drugs stabilize mood. They are used to avert or minimize the highs and lows that individuals experience and which might suggest conditions relating to mania like irritability, angry outburst and so on in bipolar illness and other mental dysfunction. For children, the medications work to manage aggressive and impulsive behaviors. Today, the most common and established mood stabilizer is lithium carbonate. It is a salt and it has been around since the 60s. The drug acts to normalize certain chemicals in the brain and produces effects at the cellular level. Despite the fact that it can induce serious and life-threatening side effects such as lethargy, seizure or coma due to toxicity, it remains the most widely used and effective mood stabilizer to date. Once treatment with this drug starts, close monitoring is needed. It may not have any effect or are rarely therapeutic if the dose is too small and it can be fatal if the dose is over the acceptable level so tests are done to check the level of the drug in the blood.

While this drug seems to be the top choice in stabilizing a person’s mood, there are other drugs that works well too. Some anticonvulsant drugs such as Carbamazepine (Tegretol) and Valproic acid (Depakote) has some mood stabilizing properties. Carbamazepine is a second-line medication that has been used for people with epilepsy for decades and can suppress the production of blood cells so periodic monitoring is also required. As for Valproate or Valproic acid, it’s a drug that is used for different types of seizure and the liver should be checked to see if it’s healthy before the start of treatment as the drug can cause liver toxicity. Other anticonvulsant drugs like Gabapentin (Neurontin), Lamotrigine (Lamictal) and Topimarate (Topamax) can also work and must be taken as prescribed by physicians.