Stress-induced hypomania in healthy participants : the allostatic “manic-defence hypothesis”.

Abstract

This thesis analyses the structure, conditions, promises, and results of Large Group Awareness Trainings (LGATs)³, demonstrating that established environmental triggers for hypomania/mania are core features of the LGAT process, and that the majority of (ostensibly healthy) LGAT participants display symptoms that closely resemble hypomania/mania. Through an understanding of the biology of stress (the common element in identified environmental triggers for hypomania/mania), and with reference to the dopamine hypothesis of bipolar disorder, the 1911 manic-defence hypothesis is revisited, and an allostatic⁴, rather than solely psychoanalytic, mechanism by which the structured application of psychological stress leads to hypomania/mania is hypothesised.