flight of ideas
Last reviewed 01/2018
Flight of ideas is the accelerated thinking that is characteristically seen in manic and hypomanic illness.
Associations between ideas are casual and may be determined by links such as puns and rhymes.
If the speech is recorded and analysed later a link is always found between one strand of thought and the next.
Flight of ideas should be contrasted with the loosening of association found in schizophrenia.