Euphoria

Graphics courtesy of Calm ClinicOpens in new window Euphoria is an emotion that involves both intense happiness and a strong feeling of well-being.

Euphoria is often viewed as outside of the realm of normal, everyday experience, most often associated with drug experiences or with psychiatric conditions such as mania. For instance, in a search of the PsycINFO database conducted in August 2009 (PsycINFO indexes and serves as a clearinghouse for scholarly writings in psychology and related fields), a substantial number of articles, book chapters, and dissertations that included “euphoria” in the title—25 out of 54, all such works indexed by PsycINFO between 1914 and August 2009—dealt with drug-induced euphoria.

However, euphoria can result from ordinary, everyday experiences that have no negative connotations, including orgasm, athletic activity and achievement, religions and spiritual experiences, meditation, and others. For example, Corby, Roth, Zarcone, and Kopell (1978) described the euphoria that can result from Tantric yoga meditation.

Euphoria is described as a potential symptom that should be assessed as part of a mental status exam. A mental status exam is part of the diagnosis process used most frequently in the United States for psychiatric diagnosis, as recommended by the American Psychiatric Association (other parts of the diagnostic process include attaining a medical history, attaining a personal and social history, and actual diagnosis process, including the mental status exam, in his book The First Interview.