Seasonal Affective Disorder Symptoms shouldn’t be confused and ignored just in the name of “winter blues.”
“My life is cold, dark, and without any hues!
What if it’s more than just winter blues?”
SIMRA SAJID
Table of Contents
Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is a mood disorder that occurs seasonally at the onset of the different seasons ( especially winter) and, the affected ones exhibit depressive mood symptoms.
It is oftentimes taken lightly in the notion of normal seasonal blues due to changes in the seasonal patterns.
Because of this reason, Seasonal Affective Disorder symptoms have to be distinguished properly from winter blues.
It is also known by several other names like seasonal depression, winter depression, summer depression, and seasonal mood disorder.
It is more common in females than males just, like depression. And it is also found more in young adults than in older people. People who live far away from the equator are more prone to have it.
Considerably, it happens due to lack of Vitamin D. Imbalanced levels of serotonin and melatonin also play a part in SAD.
Norman E. Rosenthal, M.D., and his associates at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) first described and named Seasonal affective Disorder in 1984.
Basically, there are two types of Seasonal Affective Disorder. Below are them.
It begins in the late spring or early summer and ends in the fall. This type is quite uncommon.
This type of seasonal depression starts in winter or fall and ends in early summer or spring. This is a common and general type of SAD.
Let’s move to the Seasonal Affective Disorder Symptoms and understand the difference between SAD and winter blues.
Below I’ll put down Seasonal Affective Disorder Symptoms of both summer and winter depression.
Though it’s rare, we should know if we are in the grab of summer depression by following its symptoms precisely.
It is one of the symptoms of summer depression. People tend to become nervous and edgy because of SAD.
The ones who have Seasonal Affective Disorder become abnormally anxious and stressed. It becomes so obvious that it can be easily observed by others.
You experience a troubled sleeping pattern. It becomes hard to fall asleep and stay asleep.
There is an increase in the level of irritability. You become temperamental and peevish.
You become disquiet and tumultuous. You also undergo episodes of violent behavior.
Your appetite becomes very poor. You do not experience that hunger.
This is a natural consequence of your decreased appetite. You lose weight unusually. This is absolutely not good for your health.
The above are Summer Seasonal Affective Disorder Symptoms. Let’s move towards the winter ones.
This is a common form of SAD and many of us consider it as “winter blues” and even call it too, not knowing what actually it is and how will it affect our overall wellbeing in the long term.
Let’s look at the symptoms.
Most of the time and most of the days you will consistently feel sad and pensive. You feel so down for no reason. You have an unnamed sadness.
You feel very guilty and remorseful for no apparent reason. This guilt is eating you from inside and making you psychologically weaker because of your inaction in treating it.
You will feel hopeless, ineffective, and very useless. You don’t seem to have any hope for yourself and your future.
You look down upon yourself. You feel as if you are impotent and utterly valueless. You don’t appreciate your worth as much as any normal human being should do.
You have this feeling of unwell lingering continuously within you making you feel even nauseated.
You become really bad-tempered and cranky. Becoming irritable at the slightest of things crept into your habits.
Ah! you feel fatigued and weary very often. Your physical labor will not determine your level of exhaustion rather it’s there due to a symptom of Seasonal Affective Disorder.
You feel immensely sluggish and hard to function. Your movements, as well as speech, become slowed. This becomes severe enough to be observed by others.
You become worried and fearful for no such reason. Anxiety overtakes you for most of the days.
You feel blue out of nowhere. The feeling of depression runs within you and makes you despair and unhappy. You think it’s because of the season but it’s due to SAD.
You feel hard to think and contemplate. Your mind does not support you. It is because you are mentally not calm enough to think sanely.
You fail to centralize your thought and focus on any particular thing. It becomes troublesome for you to concentrate on anything and will cause many more issues afterward.
Your decision-making power will hamper because of Seasonal Affective Disorder. Decision plays a pivotal role in our lives and, lack of proper decision-making makes us suffer.
You tend to hog on food. You overeat especially those foods which are rich in carbohydrates to suffice your desire for carbs.
Overeating and less functioning will lead you to put on weight. It’s unhealthy for your physical and mental health.
You become excessively sleepy. You don’t feel like leaving your bed whether it’s a bright sunny day or dark cloudy night. You are overtaken by hypersomnia.
Your limbs feel heavy and difficult to function freely. You become low and weary.
Decreased libido(sex drive) is often caused by poor medical condition and in this case, it is a symptom of Seasonal Affective Disorder.
You experience a pullback from usual social activities like meeting your friends, going on a dinner date, movie nights, and many more. There’s a kind of social repulsion within you.
You lose interest in activities and things that were once enjoyable and satisfying for you. You don’t like them anymore for no reason as such.
You tend to cry very often without any reason.
There is an increment in purposeless physical activities on which you don’t have proper control.
You will feel hardships in establishing and maintaining relationships bonds with people. Your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors will interfere and become a cause of interpersonal difficulties.
Evil deadly thoughts of suicide and death will trouble you frequently if you are in the grasp of SAD. They keep coming to you time and again.
Till now, I am pretty sure you must have taken notice of all the Seasonal Affective Disorder Symptoms of both summer and winter depressions. This article will make it easy to distinguish between the above two types of seasonal depression symptoms.
Symptoms will also enlighten you to put up your guards against this disorder when you might think of it as just winter blues.
I hope to help you with this piece of an article based on “Seasonal Affective Disorder Symptoms” and would love to play a positive part in acknowledging and treating your disorder as soon as possible.
Please tell me, in which category do your symptoms fall, summer depression or winter depression, and how this article has helped you.
Kindly give your valuable suggestions to up my work and notify me of your thoughts to improve my work.
Don’t forget to share it with as many people as you can for spreading the information by shedding light on something that can make anyone’s life much better.
Thank You!
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