{"id":602,"date":"2009-10-29T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-29T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondblue\/2009\/10\/recognizing-sad.html"},"modified":"2009-10-29T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-10-29T08:00:00","slug":"recognizing-sad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2009\/10\/recognizing-sad.html","title":{"rendered":"Recognizing SAD"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>According to Karen Swartz, here&#8217;s how to recognize <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Seasonal_affective_disorder\">seasonal affective disorder (SAD)<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is characterized by recurring bouts of major depression that usually coincide with the shorter daylight hours of autumn and winter. Though a person with SAD may have depressive episodes at other times of the year, the number of seasonal episodes significantly outnumbers the non-seasonal ones.<br \/>\nFor an episode of major depression to be classified as SAD, there should be at least three episodes of mood disturbance in three separate winter seasons, at least two of which are consecutive. There should be no association between disturbance and situation stresses, such as being unemployed each winter.<br \/>\nA major depression, seasonal or otherwise, is characterized by the following symptoms [<a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondblue\/2007\/10\/depression-without-sadness.html\">my note here: also remember the &#8220;atypical&#8221; symptoms I listed last week that can occur especially in men<\/a>]:<br \/>\n\u2022\tSad, depressed, or irritable mood<br \/>\n\u2022\tChanges in appetite or weight<br \/>\n\u2022\tSleep problems<br \/>\n\u2022\tLack of energy<br \/>\n\u2022\tInability to make decisions<br \/>\n\u2022\tProblems concentrating<br \/>\n\u2022\tLow self-esteem (feelings of worthlessness or guilt)<br \/>\n\u2022\tLack of interest in or enjoyment of activities<br \/>\n\u2022\tDiminished sex drive<br \/>\n\u2022\tBodily aches and pains<br \/>\n\u2022\tMemory loss<br \/>\n\u2022\tSuicidal thoughts<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><i>*&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/feedburner.google.com\/fb\/a\/mailverify?uri=beyondblue1\">Click here to <b>subscribe to Beyond Blue<\/b><\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/thereseborchard\">click here to follow Therese on <b>Twitter<\/b><\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/community.beliefnet.com\/beyond_blue\">click here to join <b>Group Beyond Blue<\/b><\/a>, a depression support group. Now stop clicking.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to Karen Swartz, here&#8217;s how to recognize seasonal affective disorder (SAD): Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is characterized by recurring bouts of major depression that usually coincide with the shorter daylight hours of autumn and winter. Though a person with SAD may have depressive episodes at other times of the year, the number of seasonal&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-depression"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Recognizing SAD - Beyond Blue<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2009\/10\/recognizing-sad.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Recognizing SAD - Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"According to Karen Swartz, here&#8217;s how to recognize seasonal affective disorder (SAD): Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is characterized by recurring bouts of major depression that usually coincide with the shorter daylight hours of autumn and winter. Though a person with SAD may have depressive episodes at other times of the year, the number of seasonal&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2009\/10\/recognizing-sad.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-10-29T08:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Recognizing SAD - Beyond Blue","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2009\/10\/recognizing-sad.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Recognizing SAD - Beyond Blue","og_description":"According to Karen Swartz, here&#8217;s how to recognize seasonal affective disorder (SAD): Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is characterized by recurring bouts of major depression that usually coincide with the shorter daylight hours of autumn and winter. Though a person with SAD may have depressive episodes at other times of the year, the number of seasonal&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2009\/10\/recognizing-sad.html","og_site_name":"Beyond Blue","article_published_time":"2009-10-29T08:00:00+00:00","author":"Beyond Blue","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2009\/10\/recognizing-sad.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2009\/10\/recognizing-sad.html","name":"Recognizing SAD - Beyond Blue","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-10-29T08:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2009-10-29T08:00:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#\/schema\/person\/47318cdf8063cc052eccff0c99db4e75"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2009\/10\/recognizing-sad.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2009\/10\/recognizing-sad.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2009\/10\/recognizing-sad.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Recognizing SAD"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/","name":"Beyond Blue","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Therese J. Borchard","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#\/schema\/person\/47318cdf8063cc052eccff0c99db4e75","name":"Beyond Blue","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/45c\/45c6e619a20a364bd981e9dda64eaa02x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/45c\/45c6e619a20a364bd981e9dda64eaa02x96.jpg","caption":"Beyond Blue"},"description":"Therese J. Borchard writes the daily blog, Beyond Blue, on Beliefnet.com. She is the author of Beyond Blue: Surviving Depression &amp; Anxiety and Making the Most of Bad Genes and The Pocket Therapist. You may find her at her personal blog, her website, or you may follow her on Twitter @thereseborchard.","sameAs":["http:\/\/thereseborchard.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/author\/tborchard"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}