This video answers the questions: What is mania and how is mania related to bipolar disorder? A manic episode is not the same thing as bipolar disorder. Technically, a manic episode would almost always indicate some sort of mental disorder, but we don't know which one until we go through their criteria and then look at the criteria for different mental disorders. There are four main criteria for a manic episode and the second criterion (Criterion B) contains the symptom criteria. There are seven symptom criteria. Let's take a look at Criterion A. It indicates that a manic episode is a distinct period of abnormally and persistently elevated, expansive, or irritable mood and abnormally and persistently increased goal-directed activity or energy. This must last a week and it must be present most of the day nearly every day, unless an individual's hospitalized, in that case there's no time limit. Taking a look at criterion B, which is the criterion that contains the symptom criteria for a manic episode. It also supplies additional information about how to evaluate those symptoms. It indicates that three or more of the seven symptoms are required for a diagnosis or four or more are required if we only see an irritable mood only. If there is an expansive mood an elevated mood combined with the irritable mood, it would still be three or more. We also see other information here, which is that the symptoms must be present to a significant degree and represent a noticeable change from usual behavior. Taking a look at the seven symptom criteria in Criterion B we see increased self-esteem or grandiosity, a decreased need for sleep, an individual is more talkative than usual, a flight of ideas or racing thoughts, distractibility, increased goal-directed activity or increased psychomotor activity, and excessive involvement in activities that have a high potential for painful consequences. Criterion C says that this must cause marked impairment and criterion D indicates that the effects of substances or a medical condition can't be what is causing these symptoms.
Bipolar disorder has two symptom criteria. The first one (Criterion A) is the presence of a manic episode. Criterion B indicates the manic episode can't be better explained by the presence of another mental disorder including schizoaffective, schizophrenia, schizophreniform, and delusional disorder as well as other related psychotic disorders. There could be another explanation for a manic episode other than bipolar disorder. Another interesting point with the definition of bipolar disorder is there's no mention in the criteria about the presence of a major depressive episode, yet we almost always think of bipolar disorder as having both manic and major depressive episodes. It's important to recognize that delusions are fairly common with mania even though they're not one of the symptom criteria. Delusions are present in about 75% of manic episodes. Another note relates to irritable mood. Irritability in mania tends to increase over the course of a manic episode. A manic episode could start with elevated or expansive moves without irritability, but we may see the irritability later on in that same manic episode. Also, irritability tends to increase if the goal-directed activities are interrupted.