Seasonal Affective Disorder is now in full swing and there’s a month to go before the winter solstice marks the planets’ tilt towards the sun and the return of light to the northern hemisphere. Many of my clients, colleagues and friends are experiencing SAD symptoms and are grateful for support that takes them seriously and offers practical, achievable solutions. I can’t guarantee that you will be totally cured if you follow this advice but you will feel much better.

As always, your GP is your friend and if s/he’s not, change your GP.





WHAT IS SEASONAL AFFECTIVE DISORDER?
A form of depression that coincides with autumn and winter when levels of sunlight are low. Very occasionally, a person can experience SAD associated with high levels of sunlight. It’s less conventional depression, more of a kind of despair that you’re finding it impossible to do what you’re expected or needed to do.

WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS OF SAD?

• Sadness, hopelessness, despair
• Anxiety, panic attacks
  
• Apathy
• Lack of energy
• Sleep problems – usually needing much more sleep than in spring or summer
• Problems with concentration
• Forgetfulness
• Irritability 
• Loss of libido.
• Overeating
• Self-isolating
  

Many mammals, including humans, significantly slow down over winter. Needing to conserve energy, eat carbohydrates to keep warm, snoozing and sleeping more during winter is entirely natural but not compatible with modern life.


WHAT HELPS SAD?
Natural Light – get out into daylight for an hour every day. If you find that you can’t spend one hour a day in daylight your life is out of balance. This is not New Age nonsense, this is a fact. It is not reasonable to be unable to spend one hour a day – just seven hours a week – in daylight.

Exercise
Walking or running outside is especially helpful, but getting to the gym is great too.

Eat well
Big breakfast, lighter lunch, smaller evening meal. Fruit and veg. The usual advice. Splurging over Christmas holidays is not a sin.

A lightbox.
The later in the year you buy one the more it will cost, but still you can get a good one for £50 in December. Look for one that is Medically Certified and no less than 10,000 lux (Lux is the SI unit for illumination).

A light alarm clock
Most people with SAD find that they wake as the sun rises. In December this can be around 8am and on a grim day barely at all. A light alarm clock simulates dawn, slowly and steadily increasing illumination until it’s very bright at the time you’ve set it to wake you. This helps regulate your sleeping and waking patterns.

Visit your GP
Ask her if she will order the following blood tests:

hbA1c – a much more accurate test of blood sugar than the fasting test. Your fasting blood sugar can be fine and you can have Type 2 diabetes, which will make you feel tired.

Thyroid – low levels of thyroxin can make you sluggish, feel cold and put on weight. High levels can increase your anxiety and tendency to panic.

Red blood cell count – anaemia can make you feel cold, weary and unwell.

Vitamin D – there’s some evidence to suggest that lack of vitamin D is linked to depression.

All these blood tests can be taken via one needle!

Talk with her about taking antidepressants. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) help increase the hormone serotonin, low levels of which are associated with SAD. Many people with SAD start taking prescribed antidepressants from around October until March every year.

Psychotherapy
If you’re using psychotherapy to discover the deep-seated roots of your seasonal misery you may well discover something that helps you make sense of this part of your life. But in my opinion it’s like looking for a psychological cause for kidney failure. Therapy can offer support while you’re experiencing SAD or exploring the best treatments for it.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) that focuses on helping you get SAD into perspective and planning activities that will help you move through it more easily is helpful. CBT that aims to make you a person who doesn’t experience SAD is not.




Further information

MIND Seasonal Affective Disorder

NHS Seasonal Affective Disorder  

The Automated Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire – an interesting self test to determine your circadian rhythms and when you might find it most useful to use a light box.   

Back in the early 90’s I ran an organisation that advised on everything to do with death and dying, including sitting vigil with the dying, so I’m relaxed around the subject. In general though, people feel that death is something that they can’t speak about, perhaps because it will bring death to them or make people think they’re weird, so I was slightly anxious about how many people would turn up to the first Portobello Death Café, especially since it was being recorded by Radio 4.

I need not have worried. In all, there were about 20 of us, about half of whom looked under 25, and the conversation flowed beautifully. Not surprisingly, older people had developed their philosophy around death, it seemed to hold no fear for them, and they were keen to stress how important it was to live as full a life as possible. Younger people seemed more focused on the deaths they had experienced and how the process of dying, death and bereavement seemed too haphazard, that there were no rituals to guide them or anyone else through something that didn’t just happen for one day but resonated throughout their lives.

(A few days later Selfies At Funerals appeared on tumblr, which confirmed those experiences. I don’t think it’s the end of civilisation but a demonstration that many young people are now totally unprepared to deal with death and are attempting to find their own way based on how they handle other events. They now know that death is not like other events.)

Right at the beginning of the evening we wrote about what death meant for us on Post It notes and stuck them on the wall. Throughout the evening the notes fell off like autumn leaves. No one missed the symbolism. The reporter put his recording equipment away and joined us as an equal, we all listened to each other carefully and respectfully. The age differences in this group were striking and whilst no overt teaching happened it was noticeable and somewhat moving that younger people listened carefully to what older people had to say and vice versa.

Then we fell upon the exquisite Red Velvet cake that Hummingbird Bakery had so kindly donated and I had to remind people to go home so that the venue could close on time. The only thing I wasn’t happy with was the part of the Radio 4 report in which I say “Portobello Death Café” as if I’ve gone mad. I was reading the cake and was fairly overwhelmed by Hummingbirds generosity and the sheer prettiness of the cake. You can hear my shame as well as the wise and useful things that people said at the café here at around 25mins in.

I’m hopeful that tonight’s Death Café will be as successful and that the one on the 13th November that will be filmed by Yahoo will come across well. People do want to talk about death, to explore their fears and philosophy and develop their knowledge by listening to other people’s experience. If you’re around Portobello, join us.

Lighthouse West London
111-117 Lancaster RoadW11 1QT

http://www.londontown.com/TransportInformation/Attraction/London_Lighthouse/bded/