Finding Sanity

Greg DeMoore

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 more than 30 years. He has written and co-written three previous books

Greg is the bestselling author of Finding Sanity – John Cade, lithium and the taming of bipolar disorder

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.

More information about Greg’s Work: 

• The Book: Finding Sanity – John Cade, lithium, and the taming of bipolar disorder
• The biography Tom Wills (Allen & Unwin, 2008 & 2011)
• A National Game: The History of Australian Rules Football (Viking/Penguin, 2008)