Mania

Mania is the mood of an abnormally elevated arousal energy level, or "a state of heightened overall activation with enhanced affective expression together with lability of affect." Although mania is often conceived as a “mirror image” to depression, the heightened mood can be either euphoric or irritable; indeed, as the mania worsens, irritability often becomes more pronounced and may eventuate in violence.

The nosology of the various stages of a manic episode has changed over the decades. The word derives from the Greek μανία (mania), "madness, frenzy" and the verb μαίνομαι (mainomai), "to be mad, to rage, to be furious".

In current DSM-5 nomenclature, hypomanic episodes are separated from the more severe full manic episodes, which, in turn, are characterized as either mild, moderate, or severe, with specifiers with regard to certain symptomatic features (e.g., catatonic, psychotic). Mania, however, may be divided into three stages: hypomania, or stage I; acute mania, or stage II; and delirious mania, or stage III. This “staging” of a manic episode is, in particular, very useful from a descriptive and differential diagnostic point of view.