Anticonvulsants are often used as mood stabilizing medications for bipolar disorders. This stems from the evidence, first noticed by dr. Post and others in the 1980s, that the manic-depressive illness appears to exhibit kindling behaviour like epilepsy -- that is, each episode/seizure is likely to lower your episode/seizure threshold. Since most anticonvulsants have gone generic, atypical antipsychotics are now being researched and pushed as first-line treatment, but modern anticonvulsants like Depakote are very efficient as acute antimanics and others like lamotrigine are useful in treating bipolar depression with a lesser risk of triggering mania.