A patient describes an abnormally elevated mood. Before revealing the answer, decide what distinguishes ecstasy from morbid euphoria.

Ask about the intensity and quality of the mood, and whether it carries any mystical or transcendent element. Ecstasy differs from morbid euphoria by its greater intensity and its characteristic mystical, transcendent quality — a sense of rapture, unity, or profound wellbeing that goes well beyond a general expansive good mood. Morbid euphoria is a more sustained, generally cheerful, expansive elevation of mood without this rapturous, mystical quality. Ecstasy may also be more brief and episodic in nature, in contrast to the more sustained elevated mood typically seen in morbid euphoria.