Tachypsychia is an abnormally rapid course of thought and associations of ideas. It can be the cause of attention disorders and difficulties in organizing. What are the causes ? How to treat it?

The term tachypsychia comes from the Greek words tachy which means fast and psyche which means soul. It is not a disease but a psychopathological symptom characterized by an abnormal acceleration of the rhythm of the thought and associations of ideas creating a state of overexcitement.

It is characterized by:

• a real “flight of ideas”, that is to say an excessive influx of ideas;
• an expansion of consciousness: each image, each idea whose sequence is very rapid involves a host of reminiscences and evocations;
• an extreme rapidity of the “course of thought” or “racing thoughts”;
• repeated puns and cock-a-ass: that is to say jumps without transition from one subject to another, for no apparent reason;
• a feeling of a head full of jostling thoughts or “crowded thoughts”;
• a written production which is often important but graphically illegible (graphorée);
• many but poor and superficial themes of speech.

This symptom is often associated with other symptoms such as:

• logorrhea, that is to say an unusually high, exhausting verbal flow;
• tachyphemia, that is, a rushed, sometimes inconsistent flow;
• an ecmnesia, that is to say the emergence of old memories relived as a current experience.

The “tachypsychic” patient takes no time to wonder about what he has just said.

Tachypsychia occurs in particular in:

• patients with mood disorders, in particular mixed depressive states (more than 50% of cases) accompanied by irritability;
• patients with mania, that is, a disorder of the mind possessed by a fixed idea;
• people who have consumed a psychostimulant such as amphetamines, cannabis, caffeine, nicotine;
• people with bulimia.

In people with mania, it is a defense mechanism against anxiety and depression.

While in people with mood disorders, tachypsychia may appear as an excessive, linear production of thoughts, in the context of a depressive state, this symptom appears more as “swarming” thoughts, also including a feeling of persistence. The patient complains of having too many ideas at the same time in his field of consciousness, which usually induces an unpleasant feeling.

Tachypsychia can be the cause of attention disorders (aprosexia), superficial hypermnesia and difficulties in organizing.

At the first stage, intellectual hyperactivity is said to be productive: efficiency is preserved and improved thanks to the increase in the formation and linking of ideas, inventiveness, the richness of associations of ideas and imaginations.

At an advanced stage, intellectual hyperactivity becomes unproductive, the excessive influx of ideas does not allow their use due to repeated superficial and digressive associations. The way of thinking develops in various directions and a disorder of associations of ideas appears.

People with tachypsychia may use:

• psychoanalytically inspired psychotherapy (PIP): the clinician intervenes in the patient’s discourse, insists on what presents less confusion to lead the patient to overcome his substitute defense and be able to truly verbalize the latent representations. The unconscious is called upon but not too actively;
• supportive psychotherapy, known as motivational psychotherapy, which can stabilize the patient and point the finger at important elements;
• relaxation techniques in complementary care;
• a mood stabilizer such as lithium (Teralith), a mood stabilizer to prevent manic and therefore tachypsychic crisis.