“Depression is a painfully slow, crashing death.
Mania is the other extreme, a wild roller coaster run off its tracks,
an eight ball of coke cut with speed.
It’s fun and it’s frightening as hell.
Some patients – bipolar type I – experience both extremes;
other – bipolar type II – suffer depression almost exclusively.
But the “mixed state,” the mercurial churning of both high and low,
is the most dangerous, the most deadly.
Suicide too often results from the impulsive nature and physical speed
of psychotic mania coupled with depression’s paranoid self-loathing.”
― David Lovelace, Scattershot: My Bipolar Family
Manic / Hypomanic Episode:
A. A distinct period of abnormally and persistently elevated, expansive, or irritable mood, lasting at least one week (or any duration if hospitalization is necessary)
B. During the period of mood disturbance, three (or more) of the following symptoms have persisted (four if the mood is only irritable) and have been present to a significant degree
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)
Major Depressive Episode
A. Five (or more) of the following symptoms have been present during the same two-week period and represent a change from previous functioning; at least one of the symptoms is either (1) depressed mood or (2) loss of interest or pleasure
1. Depressed mood most of the day, nearly every day, as indicated by either subjective report (e.g. feels sad or empty) or observation made by others (e.g. appears tearful)
2. Markedly diminished interest or pleasure in all, or almost all, activities most of the day, nearly ever day (as indicated by either subjective account or observation made by others)
3. Significant weight loss when not dieting or weight gain (e.g. a change of more than 5% of body weight in a month), or decrease or increase in the appetite nearly every day
4. Insomnia or hypersomnia nearly every day
5. Psychomotor agitation or retardation nearly every day (observable by others, not merely subjective feelings of restlessness or being slowed down)
6. Fatigue or loss of energy nearly every day
7. Feelings of worthlessness or excessive or inappropriate guilt (which may be delusional) nearly every day (not merely self-reproach or guilt about being sick)
8. Diminished ability to think or concentrate, or indecisiveness, nearly every day (either by subjective account or as observed by others)
9. Recurrent thoughts of death (not just fear of dying), recurrent suicidal ideation without a specific plan, or a suicide attempt or a specific plan for committing suicide
The Calculating Mind 