MANGANESE POISONING

A toxic disorder produced by inhalation of volatile manganese; classified by the American Psychiatric Association (1952) under brain syndromes resulting from drug or poison intoxication.Manganese workers occasionally suffer from permanent neurological and psychological symptoms of a serious nature. The neurological symptoms include gait and speech disturbances, tremors, and muscle weakness. About one out of five cases also exhibit such mental symptoms as restlessness, euphoria, and uncontrollable laughing and crying. No specific therapy is available.See BRAIN DISORDERS. MANIA. This term has three principal meanings. First, in popular usage it refers to a violent, frenzied, deranged state of mind; secondary forms of the term are usually used: “a maniacal killer,” or “the ravings of a maniac.” Maniac is a sensational, inaccurate, misleading term often applied to all seriously disturbed individuals, giving the false impression that they are likely to be dangerous to others.Second, mania is a technical term for a state of hyperactivity and excitement. In manic-depressive reactions there are three major levels of mania: hypomania, acute mania, and, most extreme, delirious mania.Third, the term is also applied technically to denote a morbid preoccupation with a certain activity, idea, or desire; or an uncontrollable impulse to perform a certain kind of act. Here the term is used either as a suffix or in combination with other terms. A person who has a pathological urge to collect various articles is often said to have a collecting mania; one who is morbidly interested in himself suffers from egomania; an irresistible impulse to steal is called kleptomania. Other examples are: doubting mania (obsessive doubting even when the truth is obvious), nosomania (the delusion of being diseased), oniomania (the compulsion to spend money), arithmomania (the compulsion to count), onomatomania (preoccupation with words or a particular word), graphomania (a compulsive urge to write), erotographomania (to write love letters), choreomania (to dance, as in the medieval dancing mania), phan- ermania (to touch a part of one’s body, such as the nose, which may represent the penis), poriomania (to wander, with or without amnesia, as in certain epileptic and senile patients), tomomania (to be operated on), and pharmaco- mania (to take medicines).Some authors seem to have an uncontrollable urge to devise special names for the many kinds of manias.One example is “trichorrhexomania,” which simply means the compulsion to break off one’s hair with the fingernails. The creator of this term was probably suffering from “nominomania,” a mania for naming. See kleptomania, NYMPHOMANIA, NECROMANIA, PY- ROMANIA, EGOMANIA, GRANDIOSE DELUSIONS, MONOMANIA, HYPOMANIC PERSONALITY, MANIC-DEPRESSIVE REACTION (MANIC PHASE), PATHOLOGICAL INTOXICATION, HOARDING, OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE REACTION, MASS HYSTERIA.