Peter Whybrow obituary

Neuropsychiatrist and writer whose research reshaped the understanding and treatment of mood disorders

In the mid-1980s, the neuropsychiatrist Peter Whybrow, who has died aged 86, and his colleague Marc Bauer encountered a strange case involving a 41-year-old doctor. Ten years previously he had had a suspected pre-cancerous cold thyroid nodule surgically removed. After eight years he began to behave extremely erratically, going out at night and not coming home despite being married with children. Then he would go to bed for a week and not get up, and lost his job.

His family forced him to see a psychiatrist, who diagnosed him with manic depression and put him on lithium. However, his rapid cycling between depression and mania did not improve, and withdrawing from lithium made him wildly manic.