Original 20 items, not the Seasonal Pattern Assessment Questionnaire (SPAQ, Rosenthal et al. 1984) — we do not administer that instrument.
Seasonal Mood Check-In, Free 20-Question Self-Reflection
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.
What is the Seasonal Mood Check-In?
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.
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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.
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