She was extremely restless, constantly pacing the house, and talking non-stop. She hardly slept at night, but kept up the same pace. Belinda's new boyfriend was just a casual date and, far from selling well, her usually delicate paintings had become a mad slap and slop of paint on canvas. But Belinda was spending on credit at a rate of knots, bringing home generous gifts for all the family. Belinda's mother was worried that her daughter was high on drink or drugs, but it soon became clear that the problem was a mental illness called mania, or hypomania.
Some people have mania alone, when it is usually called hypomania.
More often though, episodes of mania alternate with periods of depression. This is a different and more complicated condition called bipolar disorder, or manic depression. But in reality, the person can be extremely difficult to handle when manic, and many normal aspects of life, from work to social life, are disrupted. In a more severe form of mania, the person becomes psychotic. In other words, there develops a total mismatch of perception and reality, rather than what may be taken as an overoptimistic view.