manic depression

1. 1.

   a mental disorder characterized by episodes of mania and depression

   Synonymsbipolar disordermanic depressive illnessmanic-depressive psychosis

   Broaderaffective disorder

   Narrowercyclothymia

Questions about manic depression

What does manic depression mean?

manic depression means "a mental disorder characterized by episodes of mania and depression".

What is another word for manic depression?

Close synonyms include bipolar disorder, manic depressive illness, manic-depressive psychosis. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is manic depression a common word?

manic depression is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.