All about mania

Mania is known to mankind since antiquity - the manifestations of this mental disorder are too characteristic and colorful, and the people who suffer from them cannot go unnoticed. Recently, experts say that the number of people suffering from manic episodes and manic syndrome is rapidly increasing, along with an increase in the number of depressions. Some researchers argue that this is the reckoning of humanity for progress.

Mania is a mental disorder in which a person is obsessed with a certain idea, passion, desire or conviction so that it loses control of itself. This is accompanied by psychomotor agitation, a state close to euphoria. Traction to the subject of passion is so great that it does not obey the will of the patientin most cases he cannot control it. In ancient Greece, healers defined people with mania only by their appearance: an obsessive gaze, noisy, loudness, irresistible attraction. In the Middle Ages, doctors attributed mania to hysteria, while modern specialists distinguish manic disorder as a separate type of mental disorder.

Mania (translated from Greek - "passion", "attraction") may be part of a wordFor example, oniomania is a painful passion for shopping (shopaholism), and may be a separate symptom that will be used to describe the signs of many mental disorders.

WHO counted about 450 million people who suffer from mania. Manic behavior is sometimes adjacent to genius. Many famous historical figures suffered from certain types of mania. Outstanding mathematician John nash suffered from delusions of grandeur, which is also called delusions of grandeur. The disease made him refuse to take up a solid academic position, and all just because Nash firmly believed that he should soon become the emperor of Antarctica.

Manic depressive psychosis severely suffered Nikolay Gogol. The writer could lie motionless for several weeks without leaving his home, without communicating with anyone. He himself described his condition, and ultimately it was him who destroyed him - after two weeks of lying, Nikolai Vasilyevich died of exhaustion.

The persecution mania from adolescence was observed by a Russian poet Sergey Yesenin. He often confessed that everyone whispers behind his back, intrigues and intrigues are built against him. The situation was aggravated by hereditary alcoholism.

The specific mania was and the writer Maxim Gorky - He suffered a painful vagrancy, combined with pyromania. He often changed places of residence. He also traced a clear suicide incidence - Gorky made several suicide attempts.

American writer suffered from persecution mania Ernest Hemingway. He believed that he was under surveillance and they wanted to kill him. Tired of obsessive thoughts, aggravating the situation with exorbitant alcoholic libations, the writer committed suicide by shooting himself with a gun.

The composer suffered a manic-depressive disorder. Ludwig van Beethoven. He tried to treat himself from "dirty thoughts" with opium.Perfectionism and mania bring everything to the end at any cost the inventor suffered Nikola Tesla. Starting to read Voltaire, for example, he immediately stated that he did not like the book, but he read it and the other 100 volumes of this author manic.

Hollywood actress suffers from kleptomania (painful theft) Winona rider. She was detained several times for shoplifting and placed on compulsory treatment.

Mania, in any form, is accompanied by external symptoms and signs that are the result of over-stimulation of areas of the brain. All signs can be divided into mental and physical. At the mental level, the behavior of a person with manic syndrome is accompanied by a "swing" - unbridled gaiety, which is replaced by hopeless melancholy, depressive attacks can occur with bouts of unmotivated rage, aggression, illogical spontaneous actions. Abnormal behavior is also accompanied by an aggravation of all the senses. Thoughts are messy, confused, jumping from one to another, it is difficult for a person to concentrate. But the current thought for him is a super-idea, and therefore delusional acts are possible.

Much depends on the extent of the disease. In the subacute stage, which is also called manic arousal, man still manages to control himself. He is aware that his inclinations or ideas have nothing to do with normal behavior. True, this understanding does not facilitate his state — thoughts, desires, moods cannot be controlled by the patient. Also distinguish a simple degree and acute (with delirium). Symptoms of the disorder are increasing according to the degree: from a slight insanity, in which a person looks like an eccentric, to a real madness, in which normal thoughts are completely replaced by delusional ones.

Also, the behavior of the patient depends on the disease within which mania has arisen. If we are talking about the most common bipolar disorder, then a person can be called a joker and a joker. He often dwells in euphoria, speaks a lot, actively moves, he constantly has many completely insane plans, he can catch up with several things at once, but he doesn’t bring any of them to a logical conclusion. It is noteworthy that people with this form of manic state almost always have increased appetite and irrepressible sexual desire. With such a course, mania is often accompanied by delusional statements and hallucinations.

Social mania manifests itself in a strange, unhealthy human behavior towards others. For example, there are patients who are literally obsessed with ideas of cleanliness and order. Try to drop even a crumb of bread in the kitchen of such a person - and you will see more recently a cheerful and sociable host in a fit of intense anger, after which he may even fall into depression. At the heart of strange behavior are obsessions - obsessive thoughts. And if at first it is enough for a person to simply clean up and calm down for a while, then gradually the need to clean up becomes constant. People with a mania of purity can often wash their hands for hours and nothing will make them escape from this activity.They may jump in the middle of a workshop or at a party if they feel that their hands are dirty and close in the bathroom for several hours. Social mania delivers a lot of suffering to the relatives of a sick person - he with maniacal persistence demands that all his family adhere to its rules (in this case, maintaining cleanliness). With the slightest objection or disobedience, the anger of a maniacal patient knows no bounds.

Shopaholism also belongs to social mania - an obsessive desire to constantly shop. Very quickly, the shopaholic family begins to experience what huge debts, mortgaged property, a lot of unnecessary things bought up at a nearby store. Asocial manias are the most dangerous states. Homitsidomany, for example, have a strong desire to kill their own kind. Drug addicts, drug addicts can kill and go to any other antisocial act, if he brings them closer to his own goal - to get the desired "buzz", the dose of the drug.

Psychotic mania - disorders on the background of mental illness. They are numerous, there are both safe for others, and quite risky violations. When megalomania, for example, it seems to man that the center of the universe is he. With delusions of grandeur, a person himself believes in his superiority over a group of persons or all of humanity. He behaves accordingly. The persecution mania forces a person to constantly run away, hide or defend himself - he believes that he is being followed. People with "Plyushkin's disease" are dragging into the house any rubbish and garbage that is specially collected on the street. They sincerely believe that all this will come in handy once for them. This group of manias includes necromania (the desire to desecrate corpses) and copying (thrust and addiction to feces in any form).

Modern psychiatric reference books contain several hundred varieties and types of mania, who got their names on the subject of delusions or obsessions.

• Ablutomania - Pathological constant wash hands. Most often associated with ablutophobia (the fear of being or seem dirty). Washing hands and controlling their cleanliness take up most of the time in the patient's day.
• Agromania - the desire to live alone in nature. If a person does not have such an opportunity, he will constantly run off and leave the city without a visible goal, to spend the night in the field.
• Aydoymania - excessive pathological sexual desire. Thoughts about sex haunt the patient constantly. Even if it is possible to have sex often, sex does not satisfy the obsession.
• Arithmomania - a passion for counting, numbers, numbers. A person considers everything and everyone, constantly, can number the matches in a box or, for hours, do the addition of numbers from the receipt for the utility services in the mind.
• Bibliomania - Pathological reading, to books. A person can assemble such a library at home that he will have no place to put a bed for himself, or read for several days, forgetting about sleep and meals. Such patients can spend whole days in a bookstore, just looking at the volumes.
• Brooksomania - the desire to gnash teeth in the waking state. Next to such a person to be quite difficult - the vast majority of people can not stand such a sound.
• Geomania - an obsession to eat earth, sand, clay, grass. Often the patient thus imitates animals.
• Homicidemania - the strongest craving to kill people. The diagnosis requires isolation of the patient in a closed psychiatric ward, since the person is a real danger to others.Unfortunately, in 70% of cases, the presence of such a diagnosis is already known within the framework of a forensic psychiatric examination during the investigation of a murder or a series of crimes.
• Graphomania - uncontrollable desire to write. Sometimes they call grafomanists writers, journalists, anyone for whom writing a text is a profession. This is a wrong comparison. A real graphoman sometimes writes completely meaningless things not at all for someone to read them, but in order to satisfy his desire to write.
• Dacomania - obsessive desire to bite. And most often the patient wants to bite the people around him. He can pounce and bite a passerby, a passenger in a vehicle, a neighbor.
• Demonomania - absolute conviction that an evil spirit lives inside a person. Sometimes demons are suspected of obsession and others, constantly trying to find in the behavior of loved ones signs of the introduction of demons. And every time they successfully find it.
• Dermatomania - a dangerous form of disorder in which a person tries to cause physical damage to himself by biting himself, pulling out hair and nails.
• Dromania - obsessive need to make gifts to others. Patients can literally drive anyone crazy, because they will be scribbling him with necessary and unnecessary things.
• Dromomania - the need to wander. A person can leave the house regularly for no apparent reason, be among the homeless, in antisocial companies, out of the garbage with all that he has a bank account, an apartment and a full fridge of food.
• Dupremifomania (Baron Munchhausen syndrome) - the patient sincerely believes in all his inventions, which he shares with others.
• Zoomania - pathological love of animals (in the sense of their breeding and maintenance). It is the neighbors-zoomans, in whose apartment up to 50 cats live at the same time, turn the life of the whole entrance into a nightmare - smells in the house are such that people are forced to go to court, and the bailiffs then forcibly evict the cats.
• gambling addiction - excessive attraction to the game process. It is associated with gambling or computer games. Nothing is more important than the game process for the gamer does not exist.

• Clazmania - the need to sing loudly or shout that a person successfully does. Such people often join the ranks of the so-called urban madmen - they can perform solo songs without accompaniment in the middle of the square or the main street, while their vocal abilities are not critically evaluated.
• Kleptomania - pathological traction. It is not necessary that this will be something very necessary. Sometimes kleptomans themselves do not understand why they stole this or that thing.
• Clerombotomania - reinforced concrete, absolute confidence of the patient that he is the object of love of someone famous (artist, singer, president, Olympic champion). The fact that the patient has never met this person in his life does not bother him at all.
• Ctinomania - pathological need to torture, kill animals, watch their sufferings. With the same frequency occurs in adults and adolescents.
• Megalomania (delusions of grandeur) - the pathological conviction of man that he was born to become the ruler of the entire Galaxy, well, in an extreme case - at least one or two planets in it. In practice, it can manifest itself with a false identification of oneself with great and powerful personalities, for example, with Napoleon.
• Persecution mania - the confidence connected with crazy installations that the patient is being watched, they want to kill him.
• Nymphomania - Pathological hypertrophied sexual desire in women. Manifested in a persistent change in behavior, promiscuous frequent sexual contact.
• Addiction - a pathological attraction to psychoactive substances.
• Necromania - addiction to corpses.Some refuse to bury a loved one after his death, preferring to leave the corpse at home, while others tend to mock the dead bodies.
• Notomania - pathological desire to return home. Such people often cannot work and study normally, since they already feel an irresistible need to come back when they leave home. Can't travel.
• Oniomania - shopaholic, pathological need to shop for shopping. Often people buy completely unnecessary things in large quantities.
• Onychotillomania - obsessive desire, the need to disfigure their own nails: gnaw, break, cut nail plates, pull them out.
• Onomanomania - the need to constantly remember rare and complex words, names, dates, car numbers.
• Pyromania - to set fire to, look at the fire.
• Sitania - a painful need to eat a lot.
• Suicide addiction - A strong desire to commit suicide.
• Erotomania - Mental disorder against the background of hypertrophied sexual desire, sex in general.

The reasons why a person develops mania are numerous. Experts divide them into biological and psychological. The first include possible brain injuries, neuroinfections transferred, prolonged severe intoxication, for example, with alcohol or drugs. The hereditary cause also belongs to the biological ones - often a mental disorder is inherited from one of the parents or grandparents. Biological factors are the pathologies of the endocrine system, as well as existing associated mental illness. Most often, mania occurs when there is bipolar, obsessive or obsessive-compulsive disorder against the background of schizophrenia, prolonged clinical depression.

The psychological reasons for the development of mania include the state of prolonged stress to which a person is exposed, the conflict situation at home, at work, in any team where a person spends a lot of time. People with hysterical character traits, lack of will, emotionally unstable personalities are more prone to frustration. Experts pay special attention to the fact that adolescents have additional risks of getting manic disorder, because in the puberty period this is facilitated by the restructuring of the hormonal background. If a teenager got into a “bad company”, became addicted to bad habits, or spends a lot of time watching horror films, playing computer games, then the likelihood of developing mania increases.

Manic disorders are considered among the most difficult to heal. But in psychiatry, there are time-tested treatment regimens that have proven to be effective. In the first place, patients are offered inpatient treatment. The strict or usual will be in the hospital, determined by the doctor, based on the degree of public danger of the patient. The first stage is drug therapy. For her use of drugs, antipsychotics (Aminazin, Haloperidol). They allow you to take control of the patient's condition.

This task is not easy, because the patient himself cannot control himself, and therefore high doses of neuroleptics can be used. With their help, increased psychomotor agitation is blocked. Before antipsychotics became known to mankind, electroconvulsive (stun) therapy was used to treat mania. Sometimes it was necessary to subject a person to discharges of current several times a day. Some doctors still believe that it is the ESH therapy that is most effective in the treatment of manic syndrome. But studies have shown that antipsychotics are a more humane and faster way to help a person cope with a disease. Additionally, can use drugs-benzodiazepines and antipsychotics.

For the prevention of recurrent seizures, antidepressants are prescribed. Native sick person needs to create the most favorable and welcoming atmosphere in the family. Psychiatrists have noticed that patients who at the time of the start of treatment had a difficult relationship with their relatives and friends, more often “broke off” and allowed a relapse of the disease. It is possible that relatives will also need help, but already a psychologist.

In psychology, there are many ways and methods that allow you to change the emotional background in the family. Important! People with delusions often lose their capacity, can sign their apartment to a stranger, they can become victims of a crime or commit it themselves. Therefore, relatives are advised not to wait for sad events, but to go to a psychiatric clinic with a request for compulsory hospitalization. Perhaps this will require a court decision - it can be obtained under a simplified scheme, if the fact of the disease is diagnosed and proven.

It is incorrect and criminal to try to find folk remedies for the treatment of manic disorder, to treat the patient with unconventional means, to turn to sorcerers and shamans. This will not help and will only aggravate the situation, because precious time is running out, and the neglected forms of mania can be treated much harder. With timely treatment to the doctor, no one is going to make forecasts. How a person behaves, who was “pulled out” from his beautiful world, where he could do everything, was meaningful, important, unique, being in reality, it is impossible to say. Some after treatment are trying to commit suicide. The world around them seems to them dull, dreary, gray. In about 45% of cases, relapses occur. In chronic mania attacks can be repeated up to 3-4 times a year and more often.

About what is dangerous mania in bipolar disorder, see the following video.