seasonal affective disorder
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2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Fabienne Sandkuehler ◽  
Sarah Brochhagen ◽  
Rosa Clara Muscheidt ◽  
Teja Wolfgang Groemer ◽  
Helge Mueller ◽  
...  

Background. Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is common and debilitating. The standard of care includes light therapy provided by a light box; however, this treatment is restrictive and only moderately effective. Advances in LED technology enable lighting solutions that emit vastly more light than traditional light boxes. Here, we assess the feasibility of BROAD (Bright, whole-ROom, All-Day) light therapy and get a first estimate for its potential effectiveness. Methods. Patients were randomly assigned to a treatment for four weeks; consisting of either a very brightly illuminated room in their home for at least six hours per day (BROAD light therapy) or 30 minutes in front of a standard 10,000 lux SAD light box. Feasibility was assessed by monitoring recruitment, adherence, and side effects. SAD symptoms were measured at baseline and after two and four weeks, with the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale-Seasonal Affective Disorders 29-items, self-report version. Results. All 62 patients who started treatment were available at four-week follow-up and no significant adverse effects were reported. SAD symptoms of both groups improved similarly and considerably, in line with previous results. Exploratory analyses indicate that a higher illuminance (lux) is associated with a larger symptom improvement in the BROAD light therapy group. Conclusions. BROAD light therapy is feasible and seems similarly effective as the standard of care while not confining the participants to 30 minutes in front of the light box. In follow-up trials, it should be modified for increased illuminance, possibly increasing its effectiveness over that of light box treatment.


2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 112-119
Author(s):  
I. I. Ukraintsev ◽  
E. D. Schastnyy ◽  
N. A. Bokhan

Aim. To study the incidence rate, clinical features, and prognosis of seasonal affective disorder (SAD) in senior (6th-year) medical students.Materials and methods. SAD screening using the Seasonal Pattern Assessment Questionnaire (SPAQ, 1987) included 119 undergraduate medical students. 78 students were females (65.5%) and 41 – males (34.5%) (p = 0.001). The average age of women was 23 (22; 23) years, the average age of men – 23 (22; 24) years. Statistical processing was performed using the Mann – Whitney U-test, Pearson’s χ2 test, and Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient (rs).Results. The data on the prevalence of affective disorders with a seasonal pattern in medical students were obtained: SAD – 9.2%, sub-SAD – 13.5%, psychological undulation of season perception (PUSP) – 16.8%. The number of students who did not exhibit seasonal undulation of the six main characteristics recorded by the SPAQ was 72 (60.5%) (p = 0.001). There were statistically significant differences in the higher median Global Seasonality Score of the SPAQ for SAD compared with PUSP, both with and without account of the gender factor (p = 0.001). The use of a binary logistic regression model made it possible to identify groups of students with or without SAD according to the SPAQ. The data obtained determined the contribution of the following factors: gender, seasonality, body weight, and the number of sleep hours per day in spring.Conclusion. The study made it possible to obtain a logistic regression model that allowed to predict the greatest likelihood of developing SAD.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dieter Kunz ◽  
Amely Wahnschaffe ◽  
Nina Kaempfe ◽  
Richard Mahlberg

The pineal hormone melatonin is the natural transducer of the environmental light–dark signal to the body. Although the responsiveness to photoperiod is well-conserved in humans, only about 25 percent of the human population experiences seasonal changes in behavior. As a consequence, humans seem to have adapted—at least partly—to the seasonal changes in day length. The aim of the study was to demonstrate that the individual melatonin deficit marker DOC (degree of pineal calcification) is related to variation of seasonal phenomena in humans. Out of 3,011 patients in which cranial computer tomography (cCT) was performed for diagnostic reasons, 97 consecutive “healthy” subjects (43 female, 54 male; age 18–68 yrs, mean ± SD: 35.0 ± 13.1) were included. Exclusion criteria were pathological finding in cCT, acute/chronic illness including alcohol/drug abuse, shift work, and medication, which are known to influence melatonin excretion. The degree of pineal calcification (DOC) was semiquantitatively determined using the previously validated method. The Seasonal Pattern Assessment Questionnaire (SPAQ) was performed in a telephone interview. Twenty-six subjects fulfilled the criteria for seasonal affective disorder (SAD) or subsyndromal (S) SAD. Seasonality was more pronounced in women than in men (SPAQ seasonality score: 7.8 ± 4.0 vs. 4.9 ± 4.5; p = 0.001) and negatively and significantly associated with age (r = −0.178; p = 0.04). The subjective sleep length significantly varied between seasons (one-way repeated measures ANOVA: F = 45.75; p < 0.0001), with sleep during winter being 53 min (±70 min) longer than during summer. Controlling for age, the total seasonality score was negatively and significantly associated with DOC (r94 = −0.214; p = 0.036). Data confirm earlier studies with respect to distribution of seasonality with sex and age. The survival of seasonality in the sleep length of people living in an urban environment underlines functionality of the circadian timing system in modern societies. Moreover, data confirm for the first time that diminished experience of seasonality in behavior is associated with a reduced individual capacity to produce melatonin.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (16) ◽  
pp. 8816
Author(s):  
Ružena Králiková ◽  
Ervin Lumnitzer ◽  
Laura Džuňová ◽  
Anna Yehorova

In modern society, humans spend most of their time in the indoor environment (home, work, school...). This indoor lifestyle constantly poses challenges to our physical and mental health by affecting our hormone levels and circadian rhythm. This article deals with the possible connection between human and working environment factors and the emergence of health problems in connection with work. Using statistical methods, the dependence between the six characteristics (age, length of employment, visual demand of the work task, satisfaction with lighting conditions, and shift work) and occurrence of health-related problems and discomfort (i.e., eye discomfort, headache, eye fatigue, and seasonal affective disorder symptoms) was examined. The paper also deals with the evaluation of lighting conditions in the workshop using the lighting design software DIALux evo 9.2. Using this software, two lighting variants were modeled. The first simulated variant included lighting parameters according to the currently used luminaries and the second variant contained more efficient LED luminaries.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Delainey L. Wescott ◽  
Peter L. Franzen ◽  
Brant P. Hasler ◽  
Megan A. Miller ◽  
Adriane M. Soehner ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Hypersomnolence has been considered a prominent feature of seasonal affective disorder (SAD) despite mixed research findings. In the largest multi-season study conducted to date, we aimed to clarify the nature and extent of hypersomnolence in SAD using multiple measurements during winter depressive episodes and summer remission. Methods Sleep measurements assessed in individuals with SAD and nonseasonal, never-depressed controls included actigraphy, daily sleep diaries, retrospective self-report questionnaires, and self-reported hypersomnia assessed via clinical interviews. To characterize hypersomnolence in SAD we (1) compared sleep between diagnostic groups and seasons, (2) examined correlates of self-reported hypersomnia in SAD, and (3) assessed agreement between commonly used measurement modalities. Results In winter compared to summer, individuals with SAD (n = 64) reported sleeping 72 min longer based on clinical interviews (p < 0.001) and 23 min longer based on actigraphy (p = 0.011). Controls (n = 80) did not differ across seasons. There were no seasonal or group differences on total sleep time when assessed by sleep diaries or retrospective self-reports (p's > 0.05). Endorsement of winter hypersomnia in SAD participants was predicted by greater fatigue, total sleep time, time in bed, naps, and later sleep midpoints (p's < 0.05). Conclusion Despite a winter increase in total sleep time and year-round elevated daytime sleepiness, the average total sleep time (7 h) suggest hypersomnolence is a poor characterization of SAD. Importantly, self-reported hypersomnia captures multiple sleep disruptions, not solely lengthened sleep duration. We recommend using a multimodal assessment of hypersomnolence in mood disorders prior to sleep intervention.


PLoS Biology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (7) ◽  
pp. e3001347
Author(s):  
Hanxin Zhang ◽  
Atif Khan ◽  
Qi Chen ◽  
Henrik Larsson ◽  
Andrey Rzhetsky

Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) famously follows annual cycles, with incidence elevation in the fall and spring. Should some version of cyclic annual pattern be expected from other psychiatric disorders? Would annual cycles be similar for distinct psychiatric conditions? This study probes these questions using 2 very large datasets describing the health histories of 150 million unique U.S. citizens and the entire Swedish population. We performed 2 types of analysis, using “uncorrected” and “corrected” observations. The former analysis focused on counts of daily patient visits associated with each disease. The latter analysis instead looked at the proportion of disease-specific visits within the total volume of visits for a time interval. In the uncorrected analysis, we found that psychiatric disorders’ annual patterns were remarkably similar across the studied diseases in both countries, with the magnitude of annual variation significantly higher in Sweden than in the United States for psychiatric, but not infectious diseases. In the corrected analysis, only 1 group of patients—11 to 20 years old—reproduced all regularities we observed for psychiatric disorders in the uncorrected analysis; the annual healthcare-seeking visit patterns associated with other age-groups changed drastically. Analogous analyses over infectious diseases were less divergent over these 2 types of computation. Comparing these 2 sets of results in the context of published psychiatric disorder seasonality studies, we tend to believe that our uncorrected results are more likely to capture the real trends, while the corrected results perhaps reflect mostly artifacts determined by dominantly fluctuating, health-seeking visits across a given year. However, the divergent results are ultimately inconclusive; thus, we present both sets of results unredacted, and, in the spirit of full disclosure, leave the verdict to the reader.


Author(s):  
Lalitpat Suthisripok ◽  

Recently, people pay less attention to their sleep since there are a lot of stimulants to keep them awake more than sleeping. According to many reports, the results have shown that many are facing a serious condition, which is sleeping disorder. This condition is related to sleep and affects the ability to sleep well on a regular basis. It is a serious problem that if left untreated, the condition can lead to many more severe problems. There is a significant correlation between sleeping disorder and depression which is called “bidirectional relationship”. The studies show that sleeping disorders are a “symptom” of almost all types of depression such as Major Depressive Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, Seasonal Affective Disorder and so forth. On the other hand, depression itself can also be a cause of sleeping disorders. In addition, the studies show chronic sleep deprivation can cause the changes in Serotonin, which is the brain’s neurotransmitter, and will have a chance to lead to depression greater than acute sleep deprivation. As a result, people should raise awareness in sleeping and usually examine their sleep. To have less chance of depression, a person requires a healthy sleep period and effective care.


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