How Severe is My Depression?
Light therapy can be helpful for people with a wide variety of "blue moods" - everything from the Winter Blues and full-blown SAD, up to unipolar, non-seasonal mood disorders.
The fact is most people cannot judge for themselves whether they are experiencing the blues or a clinical mood disorder. Clinicians learn how to do this in the course of seeing hundreds of patients. Clinicians can therefore sensitively determine whether treatment is needed, and what kind of treatment.
You can evaluate whether your blue mood is seasonal or nonseasonal, and whether it is clinically severe or not. Use the AutoSIGH questionnaire to determine your level of depression. If the problem looks serious, print out the results and show them to your doctor: it's a great way to get a discussion going and move toward supervised treatment.
