For us, here’s the difference:
Hypomania : Silliness, laughing, hyper, fast talking, slight pressure, funny voices, funny faces, exceedingly happy, hyper, overactive but fun to be around, creative, productive, loving, irritability but it passes
Mania: hitting, spitting, yelling, destroys property, lifts furniture, pressure, pressure, pressure, swearing, threatening, extreme irritability, broken or little sleep, bad choices, seems to have no conscience, wants to run away, threatens to run away, danger seeking behavior yet has extreme fear, addictive behavior, can be delusional, irrational thoughts, hateful, desperate
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For us, hypomania is ok and is the place where Rye hovers at normally. It’s the place I think of when I think of Rye and his natural personality and demeanor. It’s what makes Rye who he is.
Full mania is not tolerable and is exhausting. Completely exhausting. For him and everyone around him. He is now on Depakote to try and prevent full mania. He is also on a tiny dose of Abilify to help us all from self-combusting for the next couple of days until the Depakote kicks in.
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Yes, even though they are technically on a spectrum, those two states are night and day. When manic, Carter HATES his behavior, but has minimal control over it. Awful.
I’m hopeful that Rye, and all of you, will have relief very soon.
note: The symptoms listed in this post are signs we saw as mania and hypomania for our child as a pre-teen, early teen. In adults, they look a bit different.
For adults:
Hypomania – think Jim Carrey being silly in one of his movies. Silly, but in control. Someone you would want to be around and have fun with.
Mania – refer to the video in this post - http://raisingbipolar.com/2011/03/05/charlie-sheen-you-manic-asshole/