Low every fall and winter, then back to normal by spring? A 20-question self-reflection on seasonal mood, sleep, and appetite shifts. A self-reflection tool, not a clinical diagnosis.
No signup needed — your result appears instantly.
Seasonal affective disorder domain structure (mood/energy shift, hypersomnia, carb craving, seasonal reversal — Rosenthal et al. 1984; Kasper et al. 1989) · Original 20 items, not the Seasonal Pattern Assessment Questionnaire (SPAQ, Rosenthal et al. 1984) — we do not administer that instrument.
No. This is a free, self-reflection tool, not a clinical diagnosis. It cannot tell you whether you have seasonal affective disorder (SAD) in a medical sense — only a licensed professional can make that kind of assessment. What it can do is give you a plain-language snapshot across four seasonal-mood domains, which can be a useful starting point if you're wondering whether your fall/winter dip is worth looking at more closely.
Feeling a little less energetic once the days shorten is extremely common and different from seasonal affective disorder. SAD describes a more specific pattern: mood, sleep, and appetite shift together with the seasons, the shift is significant enough to affect daily life, and it reliably reverses again by spring, not just a mild case of the winter blues.
The Mood Check-In looks at general depressive symptoms without reference to the time of year. This check-in is specifically about whether your mood, sleep, and appetite track the seasons, worse in fall/winter, reliably better by spring or summer. If your low mood doesn't seem to depend on the season, the Mood Check-In may be the more relevant starting point.
Start by treating your results as information, not a verdict. A good next step is talking to a doctor or therapist about seasonal affective disorder specifically. Light therapy (a daily session with a bright-light box, typically in the morning) and CBT adapted for seasonal depression (CBT-SAD) both have solid evidence behind them. Bringing your summary from this check-in to that first conversation can help focus it.
Taking our test should not be viewed as a comprehensive or precise evaluation of your abilities. Results are for informational and self-reflection purposes only.
Low every fall and winter, then back to normal by spring? A 20-question self-reflection on seasonal mood, sleep, and appetite shifts. A self-reflection tool, not a clinical diagnosis.
This check-in looks at seasonal mood shift through four domains that keep showing up in the seasonal affective disorder (SAD) research: how much your mood and energy actually change once the days get shorter (mood & energy shift), whether your sleep tilts toward sleeping more and struggling to wake, hypersomnia, the atypical pattern most linked to SAD, rather than the insomnia more common in non-seasonal low moods (sleep changes), how much your appetite and cravings for starchy or sugary carbohydrates increase in the colder months (appetite & carb craving), and, the actual diagnostic differentiator, whether the pattern reliably reverses, worse in fall and winter, better by spring and summer, year after year (seasonal pattern). A general low mood that never lines up with the calendar isn't the same thing as a seasonal pattern, which is why the fourth domain carries as much weight as the first three combined.
Feeling a bit more tired or craving comfort food once winter sets in is common and not the same as seasonal depression. What researchers, following Norman Rosenthal's foundational work at the National Institute of Mental Health in the 1980s, describe as seasonal affective disorder is a more specific pattern: mood, sleep, and appetite shift together with the seasons, and, critically, the shift reliably reverses once the days lengthen again. It becomes worth paying closer attention to when the fall/winter dip repeats year after year, is significant enough to affect work, relationships, or daily functioning, and consistently resolves by spring without you doing anything different.
This check-in is a self-reflection tool, not a diagnostic instrument, and it does not replace an evaluation by a licensed professional. It draws on the same four domains the clinical seasonal-pattern research keeps returning to, adapted here into a plain-language self-check, it does not reproduce any clinical questionnaire's wording. If your results suggest a real seasonal pattern, a doctor or therapist can talk through options with a strong evidence base specifically for SAD: light therapy (a bright-light box used on a daily morning schedule) and CBT adapted for seasonal depression (CBT-SAD) both have solid research behind them.
See how much your mood and energy actually shift between fall/winter and spring/summer, compared to what's typical.
Get a read on your sleep changes — whether you tilt toward oversleeping (hypersomnia) once the days get shorter, the pattern most linked to SAD.
Understand your appetite & carb craving — whether starchy, sugary foods pull at you more once the weather turns cold.
See your seasonal pattern score, the actual diagnostic differentiator: does your mood reliably reverse by spring, year after year?
Walk away with a plain-language summary across all four domains, useful as a starting point for a conversation with a doctor or therapist.
When fall arrives and the days get shorter, my mood noticeably drops compared to how I feel in summer.
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Low every fall and winter, then back to normal by spring? A 20-question self-reflection on seasonal mood, sleep, and appetite shifts. A self-reflection tool, not a clinical diagnosis.
No signup needed — your result appears instantly.
Seasonal affective disorder domain structure (mood/energy shift, hypersomnia, carb craving, seasonal reversal — Rosenthal et al. 1984; Kasper et al. 1989) · Original 20 items, not the Seasonal Pattern Assessment Questionnaire (SPAQ, Rosenthal et al. 1984) — we do not administer that instrument.
No. This is a free, self-reflection tool, not a clinical diagnosis. It cannot tell you whether you have seasonal affective disorder (SAD) in a medical sense — only a licensed professional can make that kind of assessment. What it can do is give you a plain-language snapshot across four seasonal-mood domains, which can be a useful starting point if you're wondering whether your fall/winter dip is worth looking at more closely.
Feeling a little less energetic once the days shorten is extremely common and different from seasonal affective disorder. SAD describes a more specific pattern: mood, sleep, and appetite shift together with the seasons, the shift is significant enough to affect daily life, and it reliably reverses again by spring, not just a mild case of the winter blues.
The Mood Check-In looks at general depressive symptoms without reference to the time of year. This check-in is specifically about whether your mood, sleep, and appetite track the seasons, worse in fall/winter, reliably better by spring or summer. If your low mood doesn't seem to depend on the season, the Mood Check-In may be the more relevant starting point.
Start by treating your results as information, not a verdict. A good next step is talking to a doctor or therapist about seasonal affective disorder specifically. Light therapy (a daily session with a bright-light box, typically in the morning) and CBT adapted for seasonal depression (CBT-SAD) both have solid evidence behind them. Bringing your summary from this check-in to that first conversation can help focus it.
