WHAT DO PATIENTS AND PSYCHIATRISTS MEAN BY A NORMAL MOOD?
The expression “normal mood” is basically an artificial construct. In reality, most people experience mild and transient moodswings. Anyone can feel more down than usual or more up than usual for a few hours or several days; those mild mood fluctuations are part of what we mean by normal. But when the person is always revved up or always down in the dumps, when these up or down feelings become so strong that they go beyond the usual baseline range, psychiatrists begin to consider the mood pathological even if the patient does not
Patients are likely to define the word normal in individual ways that entirely depend on their personal fusion. For people with a life-rime history of minimal depression, normal is for them slightly depressed. To psychiatrists seeing these patients and comparing them with hundreds of other people in the general population, these patients are clearly more depressed than the cultural norm and would be diagnosed as such. These people might be considered hypothymic; their mood is at the bottom of normal or slightly below.
Similarly, hyperthymics who have been energetic, driving, and productive all their lives usually see this as their normal mood. However, experts in mood disorders know that these people are more energetic and active than are most people in the population. These people lead lives at the top of normal or slightly beyond—although they describe themselves as “normal.”
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