I am female and almost 21 years old. I can remember being sad as a little girl for a very long time. I was bullied in school in almost all the years, and sexually abused from ages 6-11. It was when I was 16 that was diagnosed with depression and took mediacation for it. It worked, but then at the age of eighteen I slipped back into it, only that time the medication didn't work. Since then my moods have been up and down. For a while I will be feeling quite normal, then suddenly slip into an unhappy mood for some weeks. Nothing triggers these mood changes, and I cannot predict when they are going to change. It seemed to go back and forth between feeling normal then sad, until last year when I had this really happy energetic phase. I had never felt so happy in my life. Everything really stood out to me, like colours became much more vivid, I became sensitive to sounds and easily distracted by them. This soon became a normal mood lasting for a while, then came the unhappy mood. When in the unhappy mood, I feel lonely and so annoyed at everything. I get thoughts of death out of the blue for no reason, I find it hard to concentrate of things I am doing and become very forgetful.

At this moment, I am in my happy stage (before that it was normal mood, then before that it was unhappy mood) I have never felt so excited in my life. People tell me I am talking too loud, and too much. I feel like I have to talk, and I am so full of energy and electricity it sometimes feels like I might explode. When I am talking to people, they get annoyed, and I tend to jump from one thing to the next. When I go to bed, I am either not tired at all, or my mind is racing which makes it hard for me to get to sleep. I got hardly any sleep the other night, yet woke up so refreshed and full of energy and excitement. When my mind is racing, its like lots of different things jumping from one subject to another. I will be thinking about what I am going to do tomorrow, then suddenly in comes another thought, then maybe a word from a song, then images of things, then a couple of words from a sentance of a conversation etc etc. It just keep whizzing around and around in my head. There was one occasion when I heard a screaming in my head at night.
This is the stage that I like, because I feel so happy and full of energy, I find it easier to get on with my artwork and come up with new ideas for it. But I know that this can't last forever, I know that sooner or later I am going to slip back into my unhappy stage, and I really don't want to.

What could be the reason for my mood changes, especially since nothing is causing them to change? I see a psychiatrist every three months, who doesn't seem to do anything, but ask the same old questions and not come up with any diagnosis. A while back, I was tested for schizophrenia and other disorders, but they just said I had agrophobia/social phobia. Some of the questions I was asked back then though(which I said no to alot of them), I have actually been experiencing recently which are things like the racing thoughts etc. Could I be developing some other kind of illness besides the agrophobia/socail phobia?

I am going to see my phsychiatrist again next month, and will tell her about my spontanoius mood changes and the symptoms that go along with each mood. I just wanted to see if I could get some answers from here also. I just want to finally get a diagnosis so that I actually know what I am dealing with. Like I said, the mood changes just come on for no reason, and nothing at all causes them. I am not sure of any mental disorders in my family, although my dad told me a while ago he sometimes suffers with depression.
Can anyone help, thanks?