What type of disorder involves significant disturbances in mood, like intense highs and lows?

The correct answer is mood disorders. These disorders are characterized by significant disturbances in a person's mood or emotional state. They can encompass a broad range of conditions, including both depressive episodes with low mood and manic episodes with high mood, leading to intense highs and lows. This encompasses a variety of diagnoses, such as bipolar disorder, which specifically illustrates the fluctuation between manic and depressive states.

In contrast, depressive disorders focus more narrowly on conditions that primarily involve prolonged feelings of sadness or low mood, without the alternating high moods associated with mood disorders as a whole. Psychotic disorders primarily involve disturbances in perception and thought processes, such as delusions or hallucinations, rather than mood regulation. Conversion disorders involve neurological symptoms that cannot be explained by medical conditions, often as a response to psychological stress, without significant fluctuations in mood. Understanding this distinction helps clarify why mood disorders is the most inclusive and accurate choice for disturbances that include both high and low emotional states.