Depression Support Journal

 

In These SAD Times of the Year, Follow the Sun

January 12, 2006

(USA TODAY) -- A little grouchy, aren't we?

Perhaps you feel sluggish, less creative or withdrawn. Maybe you're eating more than usual. Join the club of 14 million Americans with Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD, a type of depression.

SAD and its milder form, the "winter blues," are caused by shortened exposure to daylight.

Symptoms begin in the fall. Five or six months later, the blues are gone, only to return the next fall. Peak SAD season runs through all of February, according to the American Psychiatric Association.

About 6% of the U.S. population has SAD, and another 14% cope with winter blues, says Norman Rosenthal, a SAD expert and author of Winter Blues (Guilford, $15.95).

Come fall, our brains and our behavior change with shorter days and less daylight exposure, Rosenthal says. We produce more melatonin, a hormone that is made almost exclusively at night. Some call it the hormone of darkness.

People with SAD are more susceptible to the extra melatonin, which affects their mood. For reasons that aren't clear, women with the problem outrank men 3 to 1.

SAD can sneak up. "It starts with feeling sluggish," says Rosenthal, a Georgetown University psychiatrist. "You start sleeping in. You aren't as pumped up as usual."

Jennetta Helton of Dearborn Heights, Mich., started noticing the problem shortly before she was diagnosed seven years ago.

"I start feeling down; I just don't want to do anything," says Helton, 37, a homemaker with a 12-year-old son. "I could sit around, pretty much all day."

Today, she uses antidepressants and light therapy to help reduce the symptoms.

The three known therapies are antidepressant drugs, light or phototherapy and counseling known as cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT.

CBT helps people take negative thoughts and turn them into realistic ones, says Jed Magen, chairman of the Michigan State University Department of Psychiatry.

Antidepressants such as Prozac work in 50% to 60% of people, and light therapy is effective in as many as 70% of patients, says Alireza Amirsadri, a psychiatrist and SAD specialist at Wayne State University School of Medicine.

Medication is the main choice for people who want a quick, convenient option and whose insurance does not pay for light units or counseling. In the long run, a light unit that costs $200-$300 is much cheaper if a person has no insurance drug coverage.

For some, there's the option of escaping someplace sunny. For others, try an outdoor sport such as skiing on sunny winter days. People also can cultivate indoor plants in a sunroom or drink their morning beverages in the sunniest spot of the home.

Or, people can take a day now and again to hibernate by rolling up on the couch, covering up with a blanket and watching television.

Copyright 2006 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

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