How is Seasonal Affective Disorder Diagnosed

SAD is a kind of depression which affects individuals during particular seasons only. Most likely it occurs during the fall or winters; however some individuals face SAD symptoms during summers as well.

Basically, people staying far away from the equator are more prone of getting affected by SAD. It is mainly the diminishing light or days becoming shorter that let such a disorder happen to a person. SAD symptoms depression treatment natural are so specific but are mostly similar to that of simple depression and therefore despite of plenty of SAD information and SAD medication available, it sometimes become difficult for the doctors to diagnose the same.

Determining If You Have SAD

The only way to determine SAD, is to analyze the kind of mood swings a person undergoes along with the season or durations of his illness. If for 2 continuous years, a person has been depressed in the winter and recovered in the spring or summer then a doctor can very well establish that he is suffering from SAD. Such dramatic mood swings in response to season change are the easiest way to differentiate SAD from non seasonal depression.

In 1985, for the first time, this term was discovered and such a disorder was established. After studying various sources and does an herbal remedy cure depression, it has been revealed out that shorter days of winter and lack of light are the two big causes of seasonal depression, especially for people who resides in extreme northern climates when winter days are short enough or there exist extreme differences in each season in terms of amount of daylight.

Treating SAD

For treating this naturally caused illness, the best SAD medication involves the light therapy. Rather than consuming natural antidepressant drugs, this light therapy along with acupuncture is quite effective. This is the reason, why other than sunlight, fluorescent lights are also considered as natural antidepressant for treating seasonal depression.

With such a vast development in field of SAD Medication, presently several ways have been advised to diminish the diagnostic error if any. Many times it happens that when diagnosis is based solely on the clinical picture of suspected appendicitis, there is a possibility of some error. So to avoid this, several techniques have been determined.

SAD Symptoms

If we try to find out that who is more likely to be affected by SAD symptoms, then according to SAD information, it is mostly the women between ages of 15 and 55 that are more likely to develop SAD. In fact, between 60% and 90% of people with SAD symptoms are women. Also, it a kind of genetic too; relatives of SAD affected are more prone of developing it. Older teens and young adults are also at a high risk for SAD. With growing age, the possibility of first time SAD occurrence diminishes.

A SAD affected person is generally depressed for more than a month; they feel sad, miserable or down most of the times and even lose their interest and pleasure in most of their usual activities too. Therefore it is very important to offer the SAD affected with proper SAD medication on immediate basis.