Cyclothymia
persistent instability of mood that involves recurrent hypomanic and dysthymic episodes, but no full manic episodes or full major depressive episodes

Cyclothymia (, siy-kluh-THIY-mee-uh), also known as cyclothymic disorder, psychothemia / psychothymia, bipolar III, affective personality disorder and cyclothymic personality disorder, is a mental and behavioural disorder that involves numerous periods of symptoms of depression and periods of symptoms of elevated mood. These symptoms, however, are not sufficient to indicate a major depressive episode or a manic episode. Symptoms must last for more than one year in children and two years in adults.
The cause of cyclothymia is unknown. Risk factors include a family history of bipolar disorder. Cyclothymia differs from bipolar disorder in the fact that major depression and mania are not found.
Treatment is generally achieved with counseling and mood stabilizers such as lithium. It is estimated that 0.4–1% of people have cyclothymia at some point in their lives. The disorder's onset typically occurs in late childhood to early adulthood. Males and females are affected equally often.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Cyclothymia” is persistent instability of mood that involves recurrent hypomanic and dysthymic episodes, but no full manic episodes or full major depressive episodes. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Cyclothymia, persistent and instability, not as a finished interpretation.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cyclothymia” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.