What is the threshold between hypomania and mania? (a refresher course for me)
duration severity the individual's experience Both mania an hypomania have 3 or more of the following characteristics persistent and pervasive: 1. Inflated self-esteem or grandiosity 2. Decreased need for sleep (e.g. feels rested after only three hours of sleep) 3. More talkative than usual or pressure to keep talking 4. Flight of ideas or subjective experience that thoughts are racing 5. Distractibility (i.e., attention too easily drawn to unimportant or irrelevant external stimuli) 6. Increase in goal-directed activity (either socially, at work or school, or sexually) or psychomotor agitation 7. Excessive involvement in pleasurable activities that have a high potential for painful consequences (e.g. engaging in unrestrained buying sprees, sexual indiscretions, or foolish business investments) In hypomania, these things tend to not interfere substantially with life or work and usually do not require hospitalization. Also, there are no psychotic features associated with hypomania. With mania, there is marked impairment at the workplace and/or social functioning. Hospitalization may be required and there are psychotic features. So it seems to me that there is some fuzzy space on the continuum. Severe hypomania and mild mania are kissin' cousins, right? I don't know that my latest mood episode could be considered truly manic. It's possible that the other people in my life disagree. Don't know. OFP asked what Spouse thought of "all of this." But as Spouse's mother helpfully pointed out, he has been dealing with "all of this" for more than two decades. The only difference is now we are more aware of my quirky behaviors. And if they becoming obsessively present to the exclusion of... well everything else, then it seems like something is not quite right. I have joked that I need a PCA. Someone to remind me when to get up, eat meals, start an activity, stop an activity, and keep track of time on a macro and a micro level. Not that I really want someone micromanaging me to that degree. But some imposed external structure seems to be key for me. Yuck. Comments are closed.
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K. BuchananQuaker, teacher, parent, |