Shedding Light on Seasonal Affective Disorder

Seasonal affective disorder and light therapy.

Seasonal affective disorders (SAD) represents a subgroup of major depression with a regular occurrence of symptoms in autumn and winter and full remission in spring and summer. Light therapy or phototherapy has become the standard treatment of this type of depression. The phototherapy is affective therapy for depressive symptoms of SAD. However, the action mechanism of light therapy is uncertai...

Seasonal affective disorder.

Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is a recurrent depressive disorder in which episodes occur at a particular time of year. The most frequent variant is winter SAD in which patients become depressed during the autumn or early winter, with remission or conversion to hypomania the following spring. Recognition of winter SAD is important because the diagnosis predicts a good response to the novel t...

Seasonal affective disorder.

Seasonal affective disorder.

Patients with seasonal affective disorder have episodes of major depression that tend to recur during specific times of the year, usually in winter. Like major depression, seasonal affective disorder probably is underdiagnosed in primary care settings. Although several screening instruments are available, such screening is unlikely to lead to improved outcomes without personalized and detailed ...

Seasonal affective disorder (SAD)?