Living With Seasonal Affective Disorder

For those of you who don't know, I was diagnosed with Seasonal Affective Disorder or, SAD when I was 16. I think it had been going a lot longer than when I was actually diagnosed with it, but it's something that not many people know about or understand what it does to you, so I thought I would try to explain what it does and how it affects my life.

When I was 16, I was referred to a service called CAMHS (Child and Adolesant Mental Health Services) and during my initial assessment, this was one of the things we discussed at length with the psychiatrist at the time. We spoke about my depression in general and then how much worse it got during the Winter/Autumn. We talked for a really long time about it all, and she told me, among other things, that I was suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder. 

SAD is a type of depression that comes and goes with the seasons, usually it starts in Autumn when the days get shorter and tends to improve and almost go away during the Summer. Usually the worst months are December - February as that's when the days are the shortest. Some of the symptom of SAD that I suffer with are:

• Feeling stressed or anxious
• A persistent low mood
• Tearfulness 
•  A loss in pleasure with activities I would usually enjoy
• Being less active
• Feeling sleepy
• Feeling less sociable
• Finding it hard to concentrate

I'm also one of the few who have what's called a manic period as well during the time I feel depressed. These manic periods are when I feel much more sociable, happy and far more energetic, but obviously this goes away and I go back to the low moods and other symptoms. 

As I have other forms of depression as well as SAD, my depression is amplified so much more during the Autumn/Winter months. The depression is hard enough to deal with but then with the SAD on top of that it can get almost impossible to deal with. It can sometimes get to the point during those month where I almost try and hibernate. I take a step back from everything and I try to be on my own a lot of the time, which isn't always the best thing to do because then I get even more upset and down. It can really be a struggle to get out of bed and go to lectures, and then be able to concentrate in those lectures. It's almost as though everything that's being said to me just goes over my head. I get so restless and anxious about it. I also tend to get more irritable with people and my fuse is so much shorter than it would be normally, so I can take my frustration and depression out on other people which really isn't fair at all. 

There are treatments that you can have for SAD, I personally decided not to have any just because I feel like I can just about manage it without doing anything. One of the treatments is to do with lifestyle you attempt to get as much natural sunlight as possible, exercising frequently and trying to manage the stress. Another is called light therapy and you basically have this special light that stimulates your brain and tricks it into thinking it's natural light. You can have CBT, which is cognitive behavioural therapy which is basically counselling, and you can also take anti-depressants for it. Personally, I do prefer to just try and get on with it, even if it is really tough on me. I feel as though, for me, SAD is just an add on to my other issues, and the other mental health issues I suffer with are what I need to focus on and try to get better from. Having SAD on top of the other issues is so difficult because they get amplified during the Autumn and Winter, but for me, I would rather focus on them. 

Now that the days are longer and there's more light in the day, my SAD is starting to go away for the Summer which I am so happy about. I've been in such a bad place the last few months due to so many different factors so hopefully with this problem gone, I can begin to work on getting myself back on track.

Stay awesome.