Flight of Ideas could be a disturbance in the organization of thinking:

Flight of Ideas could be a disturbance in the organization of thinking in which a person’s thoughts move very rapidly from one idea to another.

The connections between ideas may be understandable, but the person shifts topics so quickly that it becomes difficult for others to follow the conversation.

Example

“I need to go to the store because I need milk. Milk comes from cows, and cows are on farms. Farms are beautiful in the spring. Spring is my favorite season. I used to play baseball in spring, and baseball is America’s pastime. America has great cities…”

The person may move rapidly from milk to cows to farms to spring to baseball to America, with each idea triggering the next.

Key characteristics

• Rapid flow of thoughts
• Frequent topic changes
• Associations between ideas are often present
• Speech may be pressured and difficult to interrupt
• The person may be highly distractible
• The conversation may become difficult to follow

Flight of Ideas vs. Loose Associations

These are related but different:

• Flight of ideas: The ideas change rapidly, but there is usually some understandable connection between them.
• Loose associations: The connection between ideas becomes weak, illogical, or difficult to understand.

Common clinical association

Flight of ideas could be, classically associated with mania or hypomania, particularly in Bipolar I or Bipolar II Disorder, although rapid thinking and speech can occur in other conditions as well.

In simple terms: 

Flight of ideas is when thoughts move so quickly from one subject to another that the person’s speech seems to “fly” from idea to idea.

Shervan K Shahhian