Overview
“Agitation” in everyday use refers to a state of restlessness, tension, and nervousness or excitement. However, the term has clinical significance as well that can feel much stronger than the casual use of it you might be more familiar with.
A 2024 paper posits that “Agitated individuals can be dangerous to themselves and others, making agitation an emergency. Acute presentations of agitation can include restlessness, inability to stay calm, paranoia, suspiciousness, irritability, hostility, confusion, disorientation, inability to communicate, changes in vital signs, and violent behavior.”
The DSM-5-TR defines agitation as “Excessive motor activity associated with a feeling of inner tension. The activity is usually nonproductive and repetitious and consists of behaviors such as pacing, fidgeting, wringing of the hands, pulling of clothes, and an inability to sit still.”
The federal Food and Drug Administration has borrowed the International Psychogeriatric Association’s definition of agitation for dementia that includes pacing, rocking, restlessness, yelling, profanity, grabbing, shoving, throwing objects, hitting self or others, repetitive mannerisms, etc.
The International Experts’ Meeting on Agitation in 2016 acknowledges the lack of consensus around a definition for agitation, though they did provide a working description as “a state where patients cannot remain still or calm, characterized by internal features such as hyperresponsiveness, racing thoughts, and emotional tension; and external ones, mainly motor and verbal hyperactivity, and communication impairment.”
Agitation is also distinct from, but related to, aggression. In fact, aggression is sometimes defined as “behavioral expression of severe agitation with the potential to cause harm to oneself or others.”
If you’re using agitation in an everyday context, you might not mean anything as serious as clinicians and researchers do when discussing the agitation associated with a health condition. It’s good to be mindful of that distinction when reading literature.