Free Essays

Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)

"Lethargics are to be laid in the light
and exposed to the rays of the sun,
for the disease is gloom."

Arataeus, 2nd century AD

Introduction

Henry Adams, the famous chronicler of American life, wrote from Washington, D.C. to Charles Milnes Gaskell, in November 1869.

"...It is one of the darkest, foggiest, and dismalest of November nights... I would give up all my pleasures willingly if I could only be a mouse, and sleep three months at a time. Well! one can't have life as one would, but if I ever take too much laudanum, the coroner's jury may bring in a verdict of willful murder against the month of November." (Rosenthal 1989, 20)

His feelings sound remarkably similar to those described by the people for whom seasonal transitions trigger extreme changes in mood and energy, and produce depression, known as Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD." (Rosenthal 1989, 4) The relationship between depression and the seasons was first observed over two thousand years ago by Hippocrates, who noted, "It is chiefly the changes of the seasons which produces diseases" (105). Shakespeare, also, observed that "a sad tale's best for winter," and poets of all times called their beloved the sunshine of their lives. (Rosenthal 1989, 3) The doctor states, that had we studied the ancients, we might have recognized that a "seasonless" view of human physiology and behaviour is incorrect. Hippocrates, for example, observed in the fourth century BC that whoever wishes to pursue the science of medicine in a direct manner must first investigate the seasons of the years and what occurs in them. Many physicians who followed him emphasized the effects of the different seasons on the mind and body (Rosenthal 1989, 5).

Just like the bears, humans have evolved under the sun. Over hundreds of thousands of years, our bodies have been encountering the four seasons for millions of years, and so we developed a method of dealing with the seasonal changes. We continue to respond to these rhythms in the way we feel and behave. For some of us, however, these changes can disrupt our lives.

One early outsider, Dr. Frederick Cook, a ship's doctor on a nineteenth-century Belgian Antarctic expedition, described how the ship was trapped in the ice during the Antarctic winter and how the crew suffered from isolation ad the harsh weather conditions. Of all of these, the darkness appeared to affect the men most, and according to Cook, they "gradually... became affected, body and soul, with languor."

We strain the truth to introduce stories of home and flowery future prospects, hoping to infuse a new cheer; but it all fails miserably. We are under the spell of the black Antarctic night and, like the world which it darkens, we are cold, cheerless, and inactive. We have aged ten years in thirty days. (Cook 1980, 301)

He described other psychiatric problems among the crew and concluded that, "The root cause of these disasters was the lack of the sun." He treated his men with direct exposure to an open fire and found that this seemed to help them, perhaps more because of the heat than the light.

Continued here: Seasonal Affective Disorder: Syndromes