Posted by Larry Hoover on July 29, 2004, at 6:51:23
In reply to Re: Interested in learning about summer S.A.D., posted by MB on July 1, 2003, at 1:05:04
> I read the symptoms of Summer SAD, and they don't match what I'm experiencing. I'm experienceing more of a fatigued, oversleeping, overeating, apathetic depression. Supposedly Summer SAD is usually made up of symptoms such as loss of appetite, insomnia, agitation, anxiety, etc.
>
> Maybe I don't have "true" Summer SAD. Maybe, since I *am* sensitive to sunlight and heat, I tend to spend more time indoors during the Summer, exacerbating my atypical depression.You're quite right that there tends to be an "opposite ends of the spectrum" symptom list that differentiates between winter and summer SAD, but the correlation is not 100%. I wouldn't worry too much about trying to fit yourself into a symptom list. Treat according to symptoms would be the rule of thumb, not treat according to seasonality.
Interesting, considering the incidence, but there is very little research into summer SAD. I found one good article (which discusses treatment strategies), and I copied a reference from that article, as a Pubmed abstract, below.
Best,
Larhttp://www.aafp.org/afp/980315ap/saeed.html
J Affect Disord. 1991 Dec;23(4):173-83.
Contrasts between symptoms of summer depression and winter depression.
Wehr TA, Giesen HA, Schulz PM, Anderson JL, Joseph-Vanderpool JR, Kelly K, Kasper S, Rosenthal NE.
Clinical Psychobiology Branch, NIMH, Bethesda, MD 20892.
Epidemiological studies and studies of clinical populations suggest that there are primarily two opposite patterns of seasonally recurring depressions: summer depression and winter depression. In addition, there is preliminary evidence that the two seasonal types of depression may have opposite types of vegetative symptoms. In the present study, we prospectively monitored symptoms of depression in 30 patients with recurrent summer depression and 30 sex-matched patients with recurrent winter depression and compared the symptom profiles of the two groups. Consistent with predictions based on the earlier reports, we found that winter depressives were more likely to have atypical vegetative symptoms, with increased appetite, carbohydrate craving, weight gain and hypersomnia, and that summer depressives were more likely to have endogenous vegetative symptoms, with decreased appetite and insomnia. A cluster analysis performed on the patients' symptom profiles without reference to season of occurrence of their episodes separated 78% of the summer depressives and winter depressives from each other on the basis of their symptoms (chi 2 = 19.29, P less than 0.001).
poster:Larry Hoover
thread:236275
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20040724/msgs/371940.html