# Mania --- **Mania** is a significant change in behavior that comes on suddenly and lasts for a period of a week or more. It does not typically resolve on it's own, and people end up arrested or at the hospital. Without meds mania can last for many months. Before we had medications for mania they just kind of had to stay that way, for the better part of a year. This is incredibly damaging to someone's brain not to mention their social situation. Mania often occurs in individuals with [[bipolar disorder|bipolar 1]] and [[schizophrenia|schizophrenia spectrum disorder]]. It is characterized by the following: - increase in goal-directed activities - all sorts of things, and at all hours - increase in risky or leisure seeking activities - flight of ideas - rapid, pressured speech and psychomotor agitation - it's not "word salad" like the disorganized speech of schizophrenia - decreased sleep - without trying to pull an all-nighter and without stimulants - the difference between mania and insomnia is a manic person does not feel tired or feel the need to sleep or want to sleep - decreased appetite, or not noticing the need to eat - increased confidence and sense of self - often accompanied by [[delusions]] and/or [[hallucinations]] - increased irritability - This one may seem like it's out of place because it seems on the surface that someone in mania is just "very happy", but the reality is this is not happiness, and someone in mania is really quite distressed. - last but not least, and it's not really a symptom but for some reason manic people don't like wearing clothes ## Hypomania **Hypomania** is a state that is somewhere between a normal state (or "**euthymia**") and mania. The main differences is that it usually does not present with delusions, and only lasts days to weeks before it resolves with no intervention. People in hypomania tend to be a little more functional than people in mania, but not as much as in euthymia. happy/euthymic = walking your dog; calling a friend hypomanic = walking your dog 5 times a day; calling a friend at midnight; manic= walking dog naked; calling the white house ## Treatment meds for acute mania - fast acting [[antipsychotics]] like Haldol - [[benzodiazepines]] - this is pretty much the perfect situation for a benzo - once they start coming down you can give them [[anticonvulsants|mood stabilizers]] ___