It helped me with my hypomanic episodes but I still had depressive and mixed episodes, but more light and short. 
Lately I discovered I have a rash named something dermatitis on my skin, problems with the hydration of eyes, acne crazy break out from lithium. I also have a big drepressive episode with suicidal thoughts which was happening only before I started taking meds. I am going to talk to my psychiatric soon but if you guys had similar stories with lithium what happened, did you change the meds. If so I'm scared of trying other meds