Shorter days, longer nights can bring on depression. It’s called seasonal affective disorder, or SAD – the “winter blues.”
“A SAD diagnosis is usually based on whether the person has been depressed in the winter and recovered in the spring or summer for at least two years in a row,” said Gary Malone, MD, a psychiatrist at Baylor All Saints Medical Center in Fort Worth. “These dramatic mood swings during season changes are what distinguish SAD from other forms of depression.” Not surprisingly, seasonal affective disorder is more common in northern geographic regions.
The symptoms: irritability, sadness, anxiety, decreased activity, drowsiness during the daytime, and problems with work and relationships. According to Dr. Malone, SAD may cause an increase in appetite marked by cravings for carbohydrates, weight gain and excessive sleeping too. Most adults who develop SAD are women.
“For people with SAD, these symptoms usually occur at the same time each year beginning in the fall and ending in the spring,” he said.
Treatments include medication (usually an antidepressant), counseling (usually cognitive behavioral therapy), and light exposure. Light therapy has been shown to be highly effective. It is believed that light therapy helps to reset a person’s internal clock. Someone with SAD would need to sit in front of a light box that produces artificial light for a period of time in the morning. Tanning beds, however, should not be used to treat SAD, according to the American Academy of Family Physicians. The light source in a tanning bed is high in ultraviolet rays and doesn’t provide the kind of full-spectrum light needed to treat the condition.
Another popular form of light therapy is called dawn stimulation. A low-intensity light is timed to turn on at a certain time in the morning before a person wakes up. The light gradually gets brighter.
If light therapy alone doesn’t help, medicine (usually an antidepressant) alone doesn’t help, and cognitive behavioral therapy alone doesn’t help, your doctor might suggest using two or more therapies together. |
