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MHWA March Week 3: Task 18 - Symptom: Racing Thoughts

"Invalid Item"  Task 18: Find a mental health disorder or symptom that you know little or nothing about. Research it a bit and tell us in a blog entry or item: What did you research and what did you learn? Have you ever known anyone with this symptom or disorder? What forms of treatment are available for this issue? What articles can we look at to give us further information?

It's amazing how a few days of contemplating a prompt can change a person's mind on what to investigate. I was going to research Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, but this morning I decided to research racing thoughts. I discovered that racing thoughts or "rapid thought patterns"1 can be associated with several different mental illnesses. The best was to determine what they are a symptom of is to consult a mental health physician.

Racing thoughts are defined as "Thoughts, music, and voices might be zooming through one's mind as they jump tangentially from one to the next."2 According to the information I discovered they can either be background or completely take over ones consciousness.3 My interest in racing thoughts was aroused a few days ago when I encountered the symptom on a survey. After reading the prompt, I decided I was more interested in this symptom, so I researched it.

Footnotes
1  https://www.rethink.org/diagnosis-treatment/symptoms/racing-thoughts
2  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racing_thoughts#Description
3  ibid.