Innerzone, I just went off looking for a clear description of agitation, man, hard to find a good one.

There is a difference between irritability and agitation. Can I find the right words, uh no. I can only relay my experience. When I am agitated, I am physically and mentally agitated at the same time (psychomotor agitation). I will pace for hours, I cannot think, my thoughts are nothing but incomplete fractions. I feel like I am going to explode out of my skin, but this is not caused by outside sources, it's caused by internal distress. I deal with this alot, usually while in a mixed dysphoric manic state ( simultaneously manic + depressed )

Agitation is a state of emotional or mental distress. Irritability is an excessive response to stimuli, pathological, and physiological, usually used to refer to anger or frustration, by definition. Agitation would fall more along the lines of delirium. To add to the confusion, irritability is a symptom of agitation. Agitation is commonly seen in Bipolar patients, as well as Schizophrenia, Depression, Dementia ( Alzheimer's disease).

So there is a big difference between the two, but hard to find a clear concise description of agitation. I think people misunderstand agitation, we hear it used to describe things that would fall more into the irritability realm. We learn the names for emotions and states of being when we are young, agitation usually isn't on that list, and when it is I think it is usually being misinterpreted.