Seasonal Affective Disorder

Seasonal Affective Disorder (also called SAD) is a new diagnosis, describing people who regularly become depressed in response to changes in daylight. Experts feel confident enough to say that there are people who become depressed regularly (in winter) and recover in the spring.

In addition, this depression is not related to lack of exercise or opportunity to socialize or to stimulus deprivation, but appears to be related to the absence of sunlight. In the depressive phase, patients feel lethargic, sleep too long, gain weight and crave carbohydrates. They become sad, anxious, irritable, and socially withdrawn.

Four times as many women as men are affected; over half the women complain of premenstrual mood problems as well. Symptoms often improve if the patient moves nearer to the equator during winter.

Phototherapy or light therapy has sometimes been found to be effective. In phototherapy, the patient is seated three feet from a bright full-spectrum fluorescent light and asked to glance at it for a few seconds once a minute. Patients who respond usually begin to feel better after doing this several hours a day for two to four days. The treatment must be continued throughout the winter. Apparently the light has its curative effect through vision, not skin exposure. Theories of how it works relate to either altering secretions by the pineal gland, which seems to relate to hibernation on many species, or to repairing a disruption in the body's circadian rhythm caused by the shorter periods of winter daylight.

Mood Disorder Due to a General Medical Condition

This disorder consists of a prominent and persistent disturbance in mood that is judged to be due to the direct physiological effects of a general medical condition. A number of conditions, like Parkinson's, thyroid disease, hepatitis, multiple sclerosis, and stroke, are generally recognized to cause disturbance in mood directly; but this category also refers to patients with severe, painful, or terminal conditions who experience a depression in response to their pain, loss of functioning, or loss of hope.

On the next page we will talk about Being Good At Depression.