The breast cancer drug tamoxifen helps control the manic phase of bipolar disorder, and works faster than many standard medications used to treat the chronic mental illness, a new study has found.

"One of the problems with existing treatments for bipolar disorder is they seem to have this long period before they start to work," explained Dr. Husseini K. Manji, senior study author and director of the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health's mood and anxiety disorders program.

Current treatments sometimes take weeks to become effective, Manji said. "And that obviously creates a huge problem," he said. When patients are in the manic phase, particularly, not getting relief fast enough from medication may mean they need to be hospitalized, he noted.

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