Winter blues symptoms

How to fight Winter Blues? What causes winter blues? Symptoms of SAD are similar to other forms of depression, including feelings of hopelessness, lack of concentration, social withdrawal, and fatigue.

Treatments for SAD include medication, talk therapy, exercise ,. And countless others have a less severe form, dubbed the winter blues.

As the days grow shorter, people often find their moods grow darker. It’s triggered by fewer daylight hours and. Feeling less social than usual. Difficulty taking initiative. It can affect people of any age, including children.

The so-called winter blues are often linked to something specific, such as stressful holidays or reminders of absent loved ones. Seasonal affective disorder, though, is different. It’s a well-defined clinical diagnosis that’s related to the shortening of daylight hours,” says Rudorfer.

Do the bleak winter months drop you into a depression? Maybe you have seasonal depression, also known as seasonal affective disorder or SAD. Common symptoms include sleeping too much, having little to no energy, and overeating. The condition in the summer can include heightened anxiety.

In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-IV and DSM- its status was changed. Winter blues is a general term, not a medical diagnosis. It’s fairly common, and it’s more mild than serious.

It usually clears up on its own in a fairly short amount of time,” says Dr. Matthew Rudorfer, a mental health expert at NIH. As winter approaches, some of us may experience the “winter blues” – feeling sad from shortening days, climbing into bed earlier and resenting waking up on dark mornings. Low moo fatigue, cravings for carbohydrate-rich foods and an urge to isolate are all common symptoms of the winter blues,’ says Workman.

If you have full- blown SA you may have highly debilitating symptoms that get in the way of everything from work to relationships. Symptoms include increased fatigue, sleeping more, eating more foods that aren’t healthy, and weight gain. Plugging a bright, fluorescent lamp into a timer and having it turn on before your alarm goes off will help simulate an artificial dawn. If shorter days and shifts in weather zap your energy and make you feel blue, you’ve got classic symptoms of a seasonal mood disorder.

The symptoms of winter blues are not as intense as those of SA but you should still pay attention to them and contact your doctor.

Does the idea of going out and mingling with people sound terribly taxing to you? Here are expert-approved ways of coping. Your “winter blues” could be.

Some people experience symptoms of major depression during the winter months and individuals with migraine have higher rates of depression than those without. Tips or Coping With Winter Blues : Stay active! The way we diagnose SAD is to diagnose depression that follows a seasonal pattern, says Kelly Rohan, Ph. The potential risk of this is that many may mistakenly self-diagnose any type of low mood as Winter Blues , and miss signs of other forms of distress (like mounting pressure related to academics, relationship conflict, etc.).

SAD symptoms include not only depression, but changes in appetite, weight gain, irritability, anxiety, sleep abnormalities, muscle aches and difficulty concentrating. After a lovely Summer of warm sunshine, golden tans and nary a cloud on the horizon, suddenly there’s a Big Blue Dark Cloud. For me, it starts as so-called “Afternoon Depression.

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