What is being in a manic state? Why can’t they see it?

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What is being in a manic state? Why can’t they see it?

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Mania is a description of an elevated /heightened mood state. It often goes with feeling very high energy, powerful, not needing sleep, ambition etc. A lot of people have high mood but not all (sometimes it shows more as irritability, restlessness, excessively sexual behaviour).

This is a separate issue to knowing about the change in state. This is called insight, and varies a lot person to person. Someone that has insight knows that their mental state is abnormal – easy example is hallucinations – if you know the demon you are seeing is not real you have insight. Insight is complicated, and often partial (you might know some things are abnormal but not others). People during an episode of mania sometimes have insight, less likely the more extreme the symptoms.

Certain mental health conditions have higher rates of insight – most people with anxiety are aware its not rational to a fair extent.

There is a specific part of mania that relies on not having insight – delusions. A delusion is a fixed, false belief, and by definition you can’t really have insight into a delusion – once you know its not real its not a delusion. So if your manic symptom is a delusion of grandeur (eg believing you’re jesus), you can’t by definition have insight.

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