Foreword

I have been asked to write a foreword to this special issue in my capacity as President of the Australasian Society for Psychiatric Research (ASPR). In many ways, I am not the best person for this task: I never had the privilege of meeting Cade; I have not done research on lithium or even on bipolar disorder; I have treated no one with lithium; and I have not myself been treated with lithium. However, there is one respect in which I can relate to Cade and his work. We are (or were) both psychiatric researchers, although from quite different eras.

As a fellow researcher, I find myself imagining what it would be like if John Cade had not made his discovery 50 years ago. We might in 1999 have a researcher, not unlike Cade, setting out on a quest to find the causes of mania. Would this young researcher find the path easier or harder than it was 50 years ago? I imagine that the contemporary Cade would be applying for an National Health and Medical Research Council project grant to support his/her research. Unfortunately, the researcher would find that the success rate for obtaining funding for psychiatric research is only one in five. With a publication record consisting of two papers and a rather speculative hypothesis, the researcher's chances of success would not be good. Our contemporary Cade might also look to the pharmaceutical industry for support. But would they be interested in a simple salt like lithium carbonate? And even if industry were interested in lithium, is not most of the research on developing new pharmacological treatments undertaken overseas? Australian industry's investment in research and development continues to be notoriously low.

Imagine that our contemporary Cade persisted and carried out the research on a shoestring budget; what fate would await this researcher when he/she tried to publish the findings? My guess is that on modern standards the work would most probably be rejected. If the young researcher was lucky enough to be accepted by the Medical Journal of Australia, there is one aspect of Cade's history that I do not think would be different. Cade's work was ignored overseas for many years, particularly in North America, which dominates the international research effort. My firm impression from talking to researchers in many areas is that it can still be difficult to ensure that research carried out in small countries such as Australia and New Zealand makes an impact overseas, whatever its quality or potential significance. Given all of the difficulties that a contemporary Cade might face, Australasian psychiatric researchers can take heart. For any of us there might be that serendipitous finding of major importance waiting around the corner, if only we are like Cade and have the ‘prepared mind’ to spot it.

As a fellow researcher, I also find myself interested in Cade's motivation for carrying out research. In my opinion, researchers generally have mixed motives for engaging in research. It has to be admitted that there are base motives such as prestige and power in all researchers, but there are also nobler motives such as the pursuit of truth and service to humanity. In some researchers, the nobler motives are predominant and in others the baser motives. It is clear from reading about Cade's life that the nobler motives were predominant in him and so it is particularly pleasing to know that he was so successful in his endeavour. I would like to believe that nobler motives lead to better research outcomes, although it is clearly not always the case.

Finally, on behalf of all members of ASPR, I would like to thank those people whose selfless work made this special issue possible, in particular the editors, Phil Mitchell, Dusan Hadzi-Pavlovic and Husseini Manji, and my predecessor as President of ASPR, Vaughan Carr, who arranged the funding for the project. Thanks also to Novartis who generously provided the funding. We hope Novartis will see this publication as the first of a very successful annual series.