Seasonal Affective Disorder

Bipolar I is identified by the length and severity of the manic and depressive episodes. The manic episodes must last for at least seven days or they must be so severe that a person requires immediate hospitalization. The depressive episodes last around two weeks. These episodes, both manic and depressive, must be an extreme, major alteration from the person’s normal behavior. An effective treatment plan for bipolar I includes medication and psychotherapy. The medication helps with stabilizing a person’s mood and the psychotherapy is for the prevention of relapse and the reduction of symptom severity. Many people with bipolar I take combination medicine treatment. The treatment includes a mood stabilizer; sometimes an anticonvulsant other times a non anticonvulsant, and an antidepressant, to help reduce depression episodes. Doctors prescribe both an anticonvulsant and an

I have diagnosed myself with seasonal depression, which I can assure you is a very real disease. The technical name for this disorder is Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD, which is defined as a mood disorder characterized by depression that occurs at the same time every year. Causes may be genetic, as I am sure that my dad also has seasonal depression. So many winters of my life have been spent shivering while walking around school, playing in the snow until I thought my hands would fall off, and fearing going back outside to feel the gust of cold wind take over my body. The condition gets worse during daylight savings when the sun sets at 5pm, and the cold night takes over. Thus, when applying to colleges, the coldest school I applied to was in Washington D.C. I refused to

     Sundowning, or sundown syndrome are terms that have been used for over 20 years to describe the reversal of day and night which often occurs in Alzheimer's and other dementing illnesses. (2) Those who are impacted are often called Sundowners and they act as if their biological clocks have reversed their day and night cycles. Some are able to function on little sleep throughout their 24-hour day cycle. Some individuals stay up all night and will then continually doze off during the day. This alteration in the sleep-wake cycle is not necessarily permanent and they may revert to earlier patterns of sleep, or may sleep for increasing periods of time. (1)

Commonly known as Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder (DSPD) and other names, is a disorder in which the persons internal body clock is not in sync with the morning-rise evening-sleep pattern of the majority of people. Individuals with this disorder are not able to sleep and wake at the times that are regulated by normal work and school hours. They usually get enough sleep to keep them at a functional level through the day but not enough to be considered “well rested”. Polysomnography and actigraphy are tests commonly ordered for some sleep disorders to determine the illness. The cause of Delayed Sleep Phase can include a variety of reasons; puberty being one of the main causes, but some people are born with the disorder. The short term and long term effects of this illness is unfortunate for a person’s overall health. Overall cures to this disorder have not been found yet. Doctors have suggested sleeping pills to help or other alternatives. The disorder affects the timing of sleep, peak period of alertness, the core body temperature rhythm, hormonal and other daily cycles.

To explain the control of biological rhythms by just referring to endogenous pacemakers such as the SCN is an example of biological reductionism. This is a limited approach as it is partial and does not take account of the interaction of endogenous pacemakers with exogenous zeitgeber. The psychologists assume that the damage to the SCN is the only causation of the disturbed sleep there is no consideration that the sleep-waking cycle could be a more complex mechanism. The SCN is connected to the pineal gland which could be the underlying cause of the disturbed sleep, due to the damage of the SCN this connection may mean that melatonin is no longer secreted efficiently. This would suggest that the SCN is only a factor within a larger pathway. Michel Siffre however did take into account the interaction of endogenous pacemakers and exogenous zeitgebers.

A hot breeze dances through the fields, and the sun shines down with golden rays of warmth. This sight is an everyday picture during the summer in Illinois, as well as much of the grain belt of the United States. Tragically, however, there is also a different picture that is all too common when the seasons change. The ground is muddy and saturated from days of rain. The sun is being held captive behind grey and black storm clouds, and the wind is howling like a dark menacing creature from a child’s nightmare. This kind of weather change, while not uncommon, still has an effect on many people. This effect is a medical problem that should not be ignored or joked about. Seasonal Depression possesses real symptoms

This disorder can be caused by several different factors, a list of these factors are as followed; Different shift work, pregnancy, time zone changes, medications and changes in our sleep pattern like staying up late or sleeping in late. It has also been

When the dark days of winter approach, people are slowed down and have difficulty waking up in the morning They are tempted to snack on holiday foods and find that the pounds will creep up on them, even as they valiantly try to diet. People can often find it difficult to focus at work or in a relationships, feel down in the dumps, or maybe even depressed. If a person says yes to any one of these criteria, than they may be experiencing a disorder called Seasonal Affective Disorder (S.A.D), or also known as the winter blues. A current study shows that the population that lives in the Northern America and European. In its very basic form, S.A.D effects 6% of all Americans suffer from this distress, Seasonality can also lead to distress, both in an individual's work and one's personal life. Over ten million Americans have suffered, or are suffering from S.A.D, and while the percentage may not seem like a large number, but it translates into over a million Americans. Though Some people may not be affected by S.A.D enough to seek medical attention, they still feel less cheerful, less energetic creative and productive during the dark winter days. The effects of the seasons on humans have been well known through the centuries to artists, poets, and songwriter. For example, Shakespeare observed that a, "sad tale's best for winter", while Keats wrote nightingale singing of summer "in full throated ease", and the singer of a modern day ballad calls his beloved the

On the other hand the theories previously mentioned do have merit and truly stand on their own. The Melatonin Theory suggests, due to the shorter longer nights of winter melatonin secretion runs rampant. This is where bright light therapy is thought to be most effective. Bright light therapy would emulate the sunlight that is taken in through the eyes and affects the pineal gland to help suppress melatonin secretion (). The problem with this though is that there are now reports that claim melatonin suppression is not necessary to reap the benefits of SAD.

“Doctors do not know the causes of Seasonal Affective Disorder” (Seasonal Affective Disorder, 2016), but it has been thought to be caused by lack of sunlight (Mayo Clinic, 2016). When daylight’s saving time occurs, this disorder may

Bipolar (BP) depression is one of the main components of BP I and BP II. Both types of bipolar depression have similar symptoms, including sadness, anxiety, hopelessness, suicidal, tiredness along with issues of sleeping patterns and appetites. Most individuals who suffer from BP I and BP II are treated with pharmacological medications and psychotherapy. Interpersonal and social rhythm therapy (IPSRT) has been one of the several therapeutic approaches that have been used to treat BP depression by utilizing the Social Rhythm Metric-II self-report instrument. In previous studies, IPSRT has expanded the time length of bipolar episodes of depression and mania by focusing on interpersonal stressors, medication adherence and establishing daily routines

Although the author is wrong about how does Circadian Rhythms happened and how to prevent it(only for 1 particular way). First of all, the author is wrong about having a dark room can help their kids, this only result in one way is depression since depression is about not interacting with people. In facts, interacting with people by talking, have fun, are ways to help the kids to release their stress at school. Furthermore, if a kid have good social life, he or she should be able to have no reason for getting depress due to their joy and love of life and games, on the contrary, by taking their equipment of having fun, they're more likely to get bored, angry, lonely, and pick on at school for not having a social network life. Therefore I conclude that the reasons that kids having depression is because of the environment and away to prevent it is to create opportunities for kids to talk with someone they feel safe, close or even able to talk with. Someone that they can trust such as a mentor health guider online. The main point of this is to help kids to communicate with someone, if they're can't communicate, that's mean they're not living but rather is creating

What is Seasonal Affective Disorder? Seasonal Affective Disorder, also known as SAD, is a psychological disorder caused by the change of season. SAD affects most people in the fall and winter months, although this is not always the case. There are two types of SAD, winter and summer SAD. It is believed, the lack of sunlight in the winter months, to be the cause of winter SAD. According to the author Flaskerud (2012), “Summer Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) occurs in the summer, remits in the fall and winter, and seems to be related to summertime’s intense heat, bright light and long days.” SAD is recurring, coming back annually as the seasons change, causing the individual to fall into a depressive

A normal functioning circadian process is greatly influenced by light from the environment, since it’s detected by cells from the ganglion cell layer of the retina. A photopigment in these cells – melanopsin- depolarises when it’s exposed to light. Then, an action potential is generated and goes through the axons in the retinohypothalamic tract to the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) in the anterior hypothalamus. As soon as the SCN is activated, action potentials are sent to the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus, where the synapsis takes place and from where preganglionic sympathetic neurons descend to the spinal cord. Later preganglionic sympathetic neurons interact with postganglionic sympathetic neurons in the superior cervical ganglia. Postganglionic sympathetic axons then project to the pineal gland, which is responsible for segregating melatonin, an hormone that induces sleep. Therefore, when the individual is exposed to little or no light, the pineal gland segregates more melatonin (maximum levels of melatonin are reached between 2 am. and 4 am.). On the other hand if the environment is still very bright, melatonin production will be repressed.

Aside from noticing night and day and clocks our body has its own system to tell us when to sleep and when to wake, our circadian rhythm. The human body naturally runs on a twenty five hour clock, so living on a twenty four hour schedule is often hard on the body because it loses an hour each day. On top of this natural loss most people do not get the right amount of sleep each night which can cause a whole host of problems. This is part of