Raymond Lam
Raymond Lam, a Professor of Psychiatry and Medical Director of the Mood Disorders Clinic at the Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health of UBC and Vancouver Coastal Health, has been selected to be a regular contributor to the Globe and Mail’s Health Advisor — a new column in which experts share their knowledge in fields ranging from fitness to psychology, pediatrics to aging.
In his first contribution, Dr. Lam discusses Seasonal Affective Disorder, and the possibility of treating it with dawn simulation devices:
I’m a morning person. This time of year I like to watch the dawn arrive while having my morning coffee. It comes slowly, before sunrise, with a gradual increase in daylight over about an hour and a half.
In summer, first light starts before 5:00 a.m. where I live in Vancouver, but a winter dawn doesn’t begin until well past 7:30 a.m. That means most people in winter wake up before there is any dawn light outside.
Maybe you have a terrible time waking up on dark winter mornings. If you also have low mood, feel tired all the time and crave carbohydrates, you may have the winter blues. More severe and persistent symptoms that greatly impair your social or work functioning gets you a diagnosis of seasonal affective disorder (SAD), a type of clinical depression. People suffering with SAD are only depressed during the winter and feel “normal” during spring and summer.