Educational reference
About this symptom
Irritability is a lowered threshold for frustration: reacting more sharply than usual to minor difficulties, noise, interruption or delay, and finding tolerance harder to summon.
It is easy to dismiss as a personality trait or a bad mood, but a sustained change from a person's usual temperament is clinically meaningful. People often describe feeling short-tempered, on a hair trigger, or unable to let things pass, and frequently feel guilty about it afterwards.
Irritability appears across many conditions. In depression it is common, and in children and adolescents it may be more prominent than sadness. It accompanies sustained anxiety, appears in mania alongside or instead of elevated mood, and is one of the recognised changes following trauma. It also follows from poor sleep, pain, and substance use or withdrawal.
Because it affects relationships, irritability is often what prompts someone else to suggest seeking help.