| A | B |
|---|
| Cyclothymic Disorder | A long-term condition where the person's moods cycle between hypomania - a "high" that can be mild to fairly severe but does not include delusions, hallucinations or other psychotic features - and depression, also mild to fairly severe but not incapacitating or suicidal. Mood swings not severe enough to be diagnosed as bipolar disorder. |
| Bipolar Disorder | Mood cycles of mania and/or depression and normalcy |
| Bipolar 1 | Experiences psychotic symptoms such as hallucinations or paranoia |
| Bipolar 2 | Experiences hypomanic episodes but not manic episodes |
| Hypomania | Generally does not impair a person's daily functioning or cause the need for hospitalization. |
| Cycling | Shifting mood swings |
| Pressured Speech | Rapid, virtually nonstop, often loud and emphatic, seemingly driven, and usually hard to interrupt |
| Flight of Ideas | Rapid shifting of ideas with only superficial associative connections between them that is expressed as a disconnected, rambling from subject to subject, and occurs especially in the manic phase of bipolar disorder |
| Malaise | A generalized feeling of discomfort, illness, or lack of well-being that can be associated with a disease state |
| Racing Thoughts | Thoughts that just won't be quiet; they can be in the background of other thoughts or take over a person's consciousness; they can gallop around in the sufferer's head like a carousel gone out of control |
| Mania or Manic Episode | Diagnosis requires at least 1 week of unusual and incessantly heightened, grandiose, or agitated mood in addition to 3 or more symptoms |
