Dementia is definitely known to be a brain disease. Perhaps what you're saying is that lithium does not alter the mind? Here is a study that suggests that it reduces aggressive behavior:
>The authors suggest that lithium can have a clinically useful effect upon impulsive aggressive behavior when this behavior is not associated with psychosis.
That's a quote from the abstract. Lithium is a behavior-altering chemical.
Here is another study where lithium is found to alter behavior (although, admittedly, in the brains of children which were identified as misbehaving):
The claim that there could be a non-dietary chemical element that altered the behavior of miscreants without any impact at all on the behavior of regular people would take extraordinary evidence before I'd believe it. Every other psychoactive drug impacts healthy brains if for some reason it is administered.
We don't know how it interacts with the body, but we're fairly certain that it doesn't alter your mind. You can stop taking it and all the symptoms will return.
>You can stop taking it and all the symptoms will return.
It sounds like you're agreeing with me that it alters your mind while you are taking it. I'm confused by the English language use going on here. The plan is to micro-dose entire cities with lithium, which means we are interested in what lithium does when you are on it, because entire cities will be on it for decades of elapsed time. The evidence clearly indicates that the people drinking this water will have their behaviors altered, potentially for their entire lives if they just so happen to stay in cities that medicate their populations in this way.
In fact, the entire point is that people's behaviors will be altered. If lithium was mentally inert, then it would not be useful as a mental health drug, and nobody would be suggesting adding it to the water supply to improve public mental health.
The only real argument against it, and I'll grant you that, that we have is that we don't know how it interacts. It's a good assumption that is has something to do with brain chemistry, but we don't know, or if it's a direct relation or indirect interaction. Or if there even is one.
It is known that lithium alters human behavior. Given that, the "assumption" of it altering brain chemistry is a red herring: because "drug that alters human behavior" and "mind altering drug" are the same thing, with or without theories about brain chemistry. Even in an alternate universe where the mind resided in the spleen, if someone suggested that a drug should be added to the water to improve mental health, it would be tautologically identical to say that they wanted to add a mind-altering drug to the water supply.
Now, to make the argument more longwinded but also more correct, if lithium treated stomach ulcers and the children were misbehaving because of discomfort, it would be impacting human behavior without being a "mental drug." However the evidence does not indicate that the counterfactual situation I proposed is true - in fact, just about every study agrees that lithium is a mental health drug prescribed to treat mental health problems.
Can you define "mind"? It is well known that lithium can be used to treat some mental disorders. It must be doing something to the brain in order to have that effect. In my view, that literally means lithium is mind-altering.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/984241
>The authors suggest that lithium can have a clinically useful effect upon impulsive aggressive behavior when this behavior is not associated with psychosis.
That's a quote from the abstract. Lithium is a behavior-altering chemical.
Here is another study where lithium is found to alter behavior (although, admittedly, in the brains of children which were identified as misbehaving):
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6819289
The claim that there could be a non-dietary chemical element that altered the behavior of miscreants without any impact at all on the behavior of regular people would take extraordinary evidence before I'd believe it. Every other psychoactive drug impacts healthy brains if for some reason it is administered.