Singing the blues come wintertime.

• Position: SAD - Brief article

"Seasonal affective disorder, or SAD, is depression that occurs on a seasonal basis," says Kathryn Roecklein, psychology faculty member in the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh (Pa.). "It does have the same symptoms and severity as major depressive disorder and, in fact, the technical name for SAD is 'major depressive disorder, with seasonal pattern.' It's just what we call depression that occurs in the winter and goes away in spring."

The winter blues, on the other hand, create lesser depressive symptoms, "but people still might find it problematic or disruptive to their lives," Roecklein explains. "There are people who don't seem to have any problem with the winter. Then there are the rest of us in the middle who notice some changes."

SAD has the same genetic, psychological, and environmental risk factors as depression during the rest of the year. Researchers still are trying to pinpoint exactly which genes are involved, but they believe the decrease in available daylight that occurs in winter is the major environmental factor: "We don't think it is temperature," she indicates.

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