Study	Reason for exclusion
Axelson 2011	Unclear diagnostic criteria, unclear participant characteristics, unclear if open or blinded, unclear randomisation
Bowden 2008	Open‐label study
Brockington 1978	Nonstandard diagnostic process. Not clearly participants with bipolar disorder. Unclear if randomised or not
Calabrese 2002	Mixture of depressed, euthymic and manic participants. No subgroup of manic participants presented
Calabrese 2005	Complex study. Recruited participants who were either euthymic or manic. Those who were manic had an open‐label stabilisation prior to randomisation. Then were randomised for maintenance therapy. Not an acute mania study.
Chou 2009	Lithium in both arms of the study
Christie 1989	Open‐label study
El‐Mallakh 2012	Maintenance study ‐ participants not acutely manic
Giannini 1984	Not a RCT
Giannini 1986	Clonidine is not one of the agreed comparators
Goodwin 1979	Lithium vs 'neuroleptics'. No individual drug data
Johnson 1971	No standard diagnostic criteria/method of diagnosis
Kwon 2001	Mixture of depressed and manic participants
NCT00314184	Maintenance study ‐ participants not acutely manic
NCT01166425	Study protocol. Appears to have either not occurred or was replaced by the study which is Findling 2015
Nieto 2014	Naturalistic study, non‐randomised
Okuma 1990	Unclear diagnostic criteria
Pavuluri 2004	Open‐label study and group with Lithium only n = 4 (valproate vs placebo vs placebo + lithium)
Pokorny 1974	Mixture of participants ‐ unipolar and bipolar disorders in all mood states. Unclear diagnostic criteria
Swann 2001	Randomisation occurred after mood stabilisation ‐ so this was a maintenance study
Takahashi 1975	Unclear diagnostic criteria. Unblinded. Non validated outcome measures

RCT: randomised controlled trial