MERIDIAN TOWNSHIP - “Low mood, sadness, perhaps irritability or anger, change in appetite or change in sleep, those can all be signs of depression,” Elizabeth Pratt, the president of the National Alliance on Mental Health, (NAMI) in Lansing, explains symptoms many of us might feel when Jack Frost comes to town.

The winter blues can be more than just the excessive desire to stay in bed all day avoiding the frigid cold the winter months bring. Today many people’s minds and bodies yearn to settle into hibernation mode avoiding the productivity of work and life demands from our modern society.

The winter blues, otherwise known as Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD is a major depressive disorder with a seasonal cycle. It has more to do with the lack of light during the winter months than the extreme cold temperatures.

“Seasonal Affective Disorder is a type of depression that recurs in a certain, similar time for more than one year. Someone might notice that they have a sadness or low mood, maybe a change in eating or sleeping patterns or irritability or increasing difficulty with work or relationships that seems to be occurring at a certain time of year. Maybe someone has a little bit of depression and then they find that it gets worse in the winter, those can all be signs of Seasonal Affective Disorder," says Pratt.

Healthy minds and bodies know the time of day from the amount of light entering the eyes. Someone with SAD often gets stuck on sleep-mode in the morning making it difficult to drag themselves out of bed due to the the increased production of melatonin, a hormone produced in response to increased levels of darkness.

Melatonin’s primary function is to transmit go-to-sleep messages from the brain to other bodily systems, preparing them for sleep.The opposite happens in the evening when normally the body starts to wind down but instead someone with SAD will be in full awake-mode.

SAD is more common in women, resulting in sixty to ninety percent of reported cases. Ethnicity, skin tone and geographical location are also factors in addition to gender that are known to influence an individual's susceptibility to SAD.

It is important to monitor yourself for changes in mood and sleep patterns lasting longer than two weeks because SAD can be just as severe as any depression and requires treatment. “I think that physicians are going to ask about if you’ve had changes in your mood, changes in how you’re functioning, how you’re sleeping or eating, anger, sadness or irritability that seem unusual for someone,” says Pratt.

If you experience any of these symptoms you should not be alarmed, there are many treatment options available to you, some even basic enough to do at home such as exercising, eating a more protein-based diet, taking Vitamin D supplements and increasing your exposure to natural light first thing in the morning.

“When you look at SAD there are other effective treatments available, which can include medication, light therapy and talk therapy, or a combination of those things that can can help people relieve their symptoms,” says Pratt.

Simple questionnaires that access if you are a "morning" or "evening" person can be the first step in determining if you are an individual with SAD and the extremity of your case. NAMI Lansing has many resources to aid in the recovery process of depression.

“NAMI Lansing offers classes and support groups that can be helpful for people who have experienced some type of depression or other mental illness,” says Pratt.