Ronald Robert Fieve (March 5, 1930, Stevens Point – January 2, 2018, Palm Beach)[1] was an American psychiatrist known for his work on the use of lithium in treatment of mood disorders.
He was advised by his department head Lawrence Kolb to investigate reports coming out of Denmark and Australia about lithium (starting with John Cade).
[3] In the 1970s Fieve appeared on numerous national TV talk shows extolling the virtues of lithium for 'manic depression', along with former patient and famous playwright Joshua Logan.
[5] Also in the 1970s Fieve, Joseph L. Fleiss and David L. Dunner were instrumental in drawing attention to the concepts of 'hypomania' (lower intensity mania) and the related diagnosis of Bipolar II disorder.
Fieve and Dunner then coined the term 'rapid cycling', published in 1974, for those patients with more than four mood changes per year which seemed to correlate with failure to respond therapeutically to lithium.