flight of ideas
Racing, jumping thoughts
Flight of ideas is rapid, continuous speech that jumps from topic to topic, with connections that may be loose or hard to follow.
The term appears in psychiatric contexts as a symptom of mania or hypomania, where thoughts race faster than they can be organized: The patient exhibited pressured speech and flight of ideas.
Distinguished from mere tangential thinking by its speed and the sheer volume of associations.
- racing thoughtsRapid uncontrollable mental activity
- maniaIntense, consuming obsession
- tangentialBarely connected to main point
- pressureForce upon contact
- scatteredSpread irregularly about
leaping · all over the place · connections · bipolar · stream · whirlwind · jumping · distractible · rapid · rapid fire · associations · free association · loose · speeding · creativity · chaos · unmoored · tangent
- mental symptomsanxiety, depression, paranoia, hallucination, delusion
- bipolar disordermania, hypomania, bipolar II, cyclothymia, manic episode
- psychosishallucinations, psychosis, delusions, delusion, schizophrenia
- talkativenesstalkativeness, verbosity, wordiness, garrulity, loquacity
- mental examaffect, cognition, memory test, attention, concentration
flight of ideaslinear thinking
Step-by-step logical progression
logical progression · sustained attention · single-mindedness · logical reasoning · circumstantiality
flight of ideasperseveration
Involuntary repetition of responses
mental block · catatonia · apathy · anhedonia
flight, flights, flying, flier, idea, ideas, ideal, ideals, idealism