All about manias

Manias have been 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 have argued that the number of sufferers of manic episodes and manic syndrome is growing rapidly, along with an increase in the number of depression. Some researchers argue that this is humanity's retribution for progress.

Mania is a mental disorder in which a person becomes obsessed with an idea, passion, desire, or belief so much that they lose control of themselves. This is accompanied by psychomotor agitation, a state close to euphoria. The craving for the subject of passion is so great that it does not obey the will of the patient, he in most cases cannot manage it. In ancient Greece, healers identified people with mania only by their appearance: an obsessed look, noise, loudness, irrepressible attraction. In the Middle Ages, doctors attributed mania to hysteria, and modern experts distinguish manic disorder as a separate type of mental disorder.

Mania (translated from Greek - "passion", "attraction") can be part of a wordfor example, oniomania is a painful passion to make purchases (shopaholism), or it can be a separate symptom that will be used to describe the signs of many mental disorders.

WHO has counted about 450 million people who suffer from mania.Manic behavior sometimes coexists with genius. Many famous historical figures suffered from some form of mania. Outstanding mathematician John Nash suffered from delusions of grandeur, which is also called delusions of grandeur. The illness forced him to refuse an offer to take up a solid academic post, and all because Nash firmly believed that he should soon become the emperor of Antarctica.

He suffered from severe manic-depressive psychosis Nikolay Gogol... The writer could lie motionless for several weeks, without leaving the house, without communicating with anyone. He himself described his condition, and ultimately it was this that ruined him - after two weeks of lying, Nikolai Vasilyevich died of exhaustion.

Persecution mania from adolescence was observed in the Russian poet Sergei Yesenin... He often admitted that everyone was whispering behind him, intrigues and intrigues were being built against him. The situation was aggravated by hereditary alcoholism.

The writer also had a specific mania. Maxim Gorky - he suffered from a morbid desire for vagrancy, combined with pyromania. He often changed his place of residence. He also had a clear suicide - Gorky made several suicide attempts.

American writer also suffered from persecution mania Ernest Hemingway... He believed that he was being watched and wanted to be killed. Tired of obsessive thoughts, aggravating the situation with exorbitant alcoholic libations, the writer committed suicide by shooting himself with a gun.

The composer suffered from manic-depressive disorder Ludwig van Beethoven... He tried to heal himself from "dirty thoughts" with opium. The inventor suffered from perfectionism and a mania to bring everything to the end at any cost. Nikola Tesla... Having started reading Voltaire, for example, he immediately announced that he did not like the book, but he read it maniacally, and 100 more volumes by this author.

Hollywood actress suffers from kleptomania (a painful urge to steal) Winona Ryder... She was detained several times for shoplifting and placed under compulsory treatment.

Mania in any form is accompanied by external symptoms and signs that are the result of overexcitation of parts of the brain. All signs can be conditionally 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 proceed with attacks of unmotivated rage, aggression, illogical spontaneous actions. Abnormal behavior is also accompanied by an aggravation of all the senses. Thoughts are chaotic, 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 actions are possible.

Much depends on the degree of the disease. In the subacute stage, which is also called manic arousal, the person still manages to control himself. He realizes that his drives or ideas have nothing to do with normal behavior. True, this understanding does not alleviate his condition - the patient's thoughts, desires, moods cannot be controlled. Also, there is a simple degree and an acute one (with delirium). Symptoms of the disorder increase according to the degree: from slight insanity, in which a person looks like an eccentric, to real insanity, in which normal thoughts are completely replaced by delusional ones.

Also, the patient's behavior depends on the disease within which the mania has arisen.If we are talking about the most common bipolar disorder, then the person can be called a merry fellow and a joker. He is often euphoric, talks a lot, actively moves, he constantly has many completely insane plans, he can grab several things at the same time, but none of them brings him to its logical conclusion. It is noteworthy that people with this form of manic state almost always have increased appetite and irrepressible sexual desire. With this course, mania is often accompanied by delusional statements and hallucinations.

Social mania manifests itself in strange, unhealthy behavior of a person towards others. For example, there are patients who are literally obsessed with the ideas of cleanliness and order. Try to drop at least a crumb of bread in the kitchen of such a person - and you will see just recently a cheerful and sociable owner in a fit of intense anger, after which he may even fall into depression. Weird behavior is based on obsessions - obsessive thoughts. And if at first it is enough for a person to just do the cleaning and calm down for a while, then gradually the need to clean up becomes constant. People with mania for purity can often wash their hands for hours and nothing will make them distract from this activity. They may jump up in the middle of a workshop or in front of guests if they think their hands are dirty and lock themselves in the bathroom for a few hours. Social manias bring a lot of suffering to the loved ones of a sick person - he, with manic stubbornness, demands that all household members adhere to his rules (in this case, maintaining cleanliness). At the slightest objection or disobedience, the manic patient's anger knows no bounds.

Shopaholism also belongs to social mania - an obsessive desire to constantly make purchases. Very quickly, the family of a shopaholic begins to experience on itself what huge debts, mortgaged property, a bunch of unnecessary things bought up in the nearest store are. Asocial manias are the most dangerous conditions. Homicidomans, for example, have a strong urge to kill their own kind. Drug addicts, drug addicts can kill and go to any other antisocial act if it brings them closer to their own goal - getting the desired "high", a dose of the drug.

Psychotic mania is a disorder associated with mental illness. They are numerous, there are both safe for others and quite risky violations. In megalomania, for example, it seems to a person that he is the center of the Universe. With megalomania, a person himself believes in his superiority over a group of persons or all of humanity. He behaves accordingly. The persecution mania causes the person to constantly run away, hide or defend themselves - he believes that he is being persecuted. People with "Plyushkin's disease" drag into the house any rubbish and garbage that is specially collected on the street. They sincerely believe that all this will come in handy for them one day. This group of manias includes necromania (desire to desecrate corpses) and kopromania (craving and addiction to feces in any of their manifestations).

Modern psychiatric reference books have several hundred varieties and types of manias, which got their names on the subject of delusions or obsessions.

• Ablutomania - pathological cravings to constantly wash their hands. Most often associated with ablutophobia (fear of being or looking dirty).Washing hands and controlling their cleanliness in total take most of 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 away and leave the city for no apparent purpose, spend the night in the field.
• Aydoiomania - excessive pathological libido. Thoughts about sex haunt the patient constantly. Even if it is possible to have frequent sex, intercourse does not satisfy the obsession.
• Arithmania - passion for counting, numbers, numbers. A person counts everything and everyone, constantly, he can number matches in a box or spend hours adding numbers from a receipt for housing and communal services in his mind.
• Bibliomania - pathological craving for reading, for books. A person can collect such a library at home that he will have nowhere to put a bed for himself, or read for several days, forgetting about sleep and meals. Such patients may spend whole days in a bookstore, simply looking at volumes.
• Bruxomania - the desire to gnash his teeth while awake. It is rather difficult to be near such a person - the overwhelming majority of people cannot stand such a sound.
• Geomania - obsession with eating earth, sand, clay, grass. Often the patient imitates animals in this way.
• Homicidomania - 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 becomes known already within the framework of a forensic psychiatric examination in the investigation of a murder or a series of crimes.
• Graphomania - uncontrollable desire to write. Sometimes writers, journalists, everyone for whom writing is a profession is called graphomaniac. This is a false comparison. A real graphomaniac sometimes writes completely meaningless things not at all in order for someone to read them, but in order to satisfy their desire to write.
• Dacnomania - an obsessive desire to bite. Moreover, most often the patient wants to bite the people around him. He can pounce and bite a passer-by, a passenger in a transport, a neighbor.
• Demonomania - an absolute conviction that an evil spirit lives inside a person. Sometimes demonomaniacs suspect of possession and others, constantly trying to find in the behavior of loved ones signs of demonic infestation. And every time they find it successfully.
• Dermatomania - a dangerous form of the disorder in which a person tries to inflict physical harm on himself by biting himself, pulling out hair, nails.
• Doromania - an obsessive need to give gifts to others. Patients can literally drive anyone crazy, because they will load him up with both necessary and unnecessary things.
• Dromomania - the need to wander. A person can regularly leave home for no apparent reason, be among the homeless, in antisocial companies, eat from the trash heap despite the fact that he has a bank account, an apartment and a full refrigerator of food.
• Dupremifomania (Baron Munchausen's syndrome) - the patient sincerely believes all his inventions, which he shares with others.
• Zoomania - pathological love for animals (in terms of breeding and keeping). It is the zoomaniac neighbors, in whose apartment up to 50 cats live at the same time, who turn the life of the entire entrance into a nightmare - the 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 gameplay. Sometimes it is associated with gambling or computer games. There is nothing more important than the process of the game for the gambling addict.

• Clazomania - the need to sing or shout loudly, which the 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 a square or a central street, while their vocal abilities are not critically assessed.
• Kleptomania - pathological craving to steal something. It is not necessary that it will be something very necessary. Sometimes kleptomaniacs themselves do not understand why they stole this or that thing.
• Cleramboerotomania - 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 - a pathological need to torture, kill animals, watch their suffering. It occurs with the same frequency in both adults and adolescents.
• Megalomania (megalomania) - the pathological conviction of a person that he was born to become the ruler of the entire Galaxy, well, in extreme cases - at least one or two planets in it. In practice, it can also manifest itself with a false identification of oneself with great and powerful personalities, for example, with Napoleon.
• Persecution mania - associated with delusional attitudes, the confidence that the patient is being followed, they want to kill him.
• Nymphomania - pathological hypertrophied sexual desire in women. It manifests itself in persistent changes in behavior, promiscuous frequent sexual contacts.
• Addiction - pathological attraction to psychoactive substances.
• Necromancy - 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.
• Nostomania - pathological desire to return home. Such people often cannot work and study normally, because already upon leaving the house they feel an irresistible urge to come back. Can't travel.
• Oniomania - shopaholism, a pathological need to shop for the sake of shopping. Often people buy things they absolutely do not need in large quantities.
• Onychotillomania - an obsessive desire, the need to mutilate one's own nails: gnaw, break, cut the nail plates, pull them out.
• Onomatomia - the need to constantly memorize rare and complex words, names, dates, car numbers.
• Pyromania - craving to set fire, to look at the fire.
• Sitomania - a painful need to eat a lot.
• Suicidomania - 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 former include possible brain injuries, neuroinfections, prolonged severe intoxication, for example, with alcohol or drugs. The biological one also includes a hereditary reason - often a mental disorder is inherited from one of the parents or grandparents. Biological factors are considered pathologies of the endocrine system, as well as existing concomitant mental illnesses. Most often, mania occurs if there is bipolar, obsessive or obsessive-compulsive disorder associated with schizophrenia, long-term clinical depression.

The psychological reasons for the development of mania include states of prolonged stress to which a person is exposed, a 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, and emotionally unstable personalities are more prone to disorder. Experts pay special attention to the fact that adolescents have additional risks of getting manic disorder, because in puberty, hormonal changes contribute to this. If a teenager got into a "bad company", got carried away with bad habits or spends a lot of time watching horror films, computer games, then the likelihood of developing mania increases.

Manic disorders are considered one of the most difficult to treat. But in psychiatry, there are time-tested treatment regimens that have proven to be effective. First of all, patients are offered inpatient treatment. Strict or usual will be the content in the hospital, the doctor determines, based on the degree of public danger of the patient. The first stage is drug therapy. For her, antipsychotics drugs ("Aminazin", "Haloperidol") are used. They allow you to take control of the patient's condition.

This is not an easy task, because the patient himself cannot control himself, and therefore high doses of antipsychotics can be used. With their help, increased psychomotor agitation is blocked. Before antipsychotics became known to mankind, electroconvulsive (electroshock) therapy was used to treat mania. It was sometimes necessary to expose a person to the effects of current discharges several times a day. Some doctors are still convinced that it is ESH therapy that is most effective in treating manic syndrome. But research has shown that antipsychotics are a more humane and faster way to help a person cope with an illness. Additionally, benzodiazepine drugs and antipsychotics can be used.

For the prevention of recurrent attacks, antidepressants are prescribed in courses. The relatives of a sick person need to create the most favorable and benevolent atmosphere in the family. Psychiatrists noticed that patients who at the time of the beginning of treatment had a difficult relationship with family and friends, more often "break down" and allowed a relapse of the disease. It is possible that relatives will also need help, but this time a psychologist.

In psychology, there are many ways and techniques that allow you to change the emotional background in the family. Important! People with mania often lose their legal capacity, they 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 involuntary hospitalization. Perhaps this will require a court decision - it can be obtained according to 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 a patient with non-traditional means, to turn to sorcerers and shamans. This will not help and will only aggravate the situation, because precious time is spent, and neglected forms of mania are much more difficult to treat. With a timely visit to a doctor, no one undertakes to make predictions. It is impossible to say how a person who was “pulled out” of his beautiful world, where he could do everything, would behave, was significant, important, unique, and once in reality.Some try to commit suicide after treatment. The world around them seems boring, dreary, gray. Relapses occur in about 45% of cases. In chronic mania, attacks can be repeated up to 3-4 times a year or more.

For more information on the dangers of mania in bipolar disorder, see the next video.