Royal Cornhill Hospital, Aberdeen
Health Services Research Unit, Foresterhill, Aberdeen
Royal Cornhill Hospital, Aberdeen
Health Services Research Unit, Forester Hill, Aberdeen, UK
Correspondence: Dr John M. Eagles, Royal Cornhill Hospital, Cornhill Road, Aberdeen AB25 2ZH, UK. Tel: 01224 663131, Fax: 01224 557433, e-mail: john.eagles{at}gpct.grampian.scot.nhs.uk
Declaration of interest Funded by the Scottish Office Department of Health and Grampian Primary Care NHS Trust.
See editorial, pp.
394395, this issue.
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ABSTRACT |
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Aims To determine the use of health care services by people suffering from SAD.
Method Following a screening of patients consulting in primary care, 123 were identified as suffering from SAD. Each was age- and gender-matched with two primary care consulters with minimal seasonal morbidity, yielding 246 non-seasonal controls. From primary care records, health care usage over a 5-year period was established.
Results Patients with SAD consulted in primary care significantly more often than controls and presented with a wider variety of symptoms. They received more prescriptions, underwent more investigations and had more referrals to secondary care.
Conclusions Patients with SAD are heavy users of health care services. This may reflect the condition itself, its comorbidity or factors related to the personality or help-seeking behaviour of sufferers.
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INTRODUCTION |
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METHOD |
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Each interview-confirmed case of SAD (none of whom had been diagnosed previously with SAD) was matched by gender and by age (to within 1 year) with two subjects who had attended the same general practice during January but who scored 6 or less on the global seasonality score of the SPAQ, this score indicating that they rated themselves as experiencing little or no significant seasonal fluctuation in their well-being. These 246 people were designated as non-seasonal controls. It is perhaps worth noting that although the control group rated themselves as being without meaningful seasonal fluctuation in well-being, no rating was made of their current mood and the control group was not intended to be one without possible depressive symptomatology of a non-seasonal nature.
The written and computerised primary care records of interview-confirmed SAD cases and non-seasonal controls were scrutinised. Use of health care services was recorded over a 5-year period, stretching back from May of the year in which they completed the screening procedures. The following data were recorded:
After complete description of the study to the subjects, written informed consent was obtained.
Statistical analysis
Data within the above parameters of health care use were not normally
distributed and therefore the MannWhitney test was used to compare
median values between SAD cases and controls, while recognising that
non-parametric statistics may be less sensitive to differences between groups.
The 2 test was used to compare the proportions of subjects in
the two groups having symptoms, prescriptions and test/investigations,
classified into either zero or at least unity on each parameter. This
classification was used because the majority of subjects tended to have had
none, one or two within each parameter, with only a few having a large number.
Because as many as 20 comparisons between SAD cases and controls were
sometimes made, P values of <0.025 were taken as a conservative
indication of statistical significance.
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RESULTS |
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Patients and controls
Among the interview-confirmed SAD patients, 21 (17%) were male and 102
(83%) were female, with double these numbers and the same percentages for
controls. The mean age of patients was 39 years (s.d.=10.8) and was the same
as that of controls (s.d.=11.0).
Main findings
Table 1 shows some of the
main differences in use of health care services between patients with SAD and
controls. Apart from hospital admissions (which were rare in both groups),
there was excess use of services on all parameters by the patients with
SAD.
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Symptoms presented
Tables 2 and
3 give details of the symptoms
presented more often by sufferers of SAD at consultations over 5 years.
Table 2 categorises symptoms by
bodily system. Nearly 15% of all recorded symptoms could not be classified
reliably, and these were grouped as miscellaneous/unclassifiable. This arose
either because the presenting complaint was not sufficiently clearly recorded
or, more usually, because the aetiology of the symptom (e.g. nausea, chest
pain, fatigue) could not be assigned reliably to a particular bodily system.
Patients with SAD presented with symptoms in a greater number of different
bodily systems (median 4 (interquartile range=3-5) v. 3 (2-4) in
controls; MannWhitney P<0.001); 59%, as against 30% of
controls, presented with symptoms in four or more different systems.
Table 3 relates to symptoms
that have been linked previously to the presentation of SAD. Among these
symptoms, it is reassuring that those of depression, tiredness/lethargy and
weight gain/bingeing are more common because these would be regarded as
central components of the disorder. Anxiety/panic also are more common, which
presumably accounts for the excess of presentations with palpitations. The
three types of symptoms that might generally be considered as less clearly
linked to SAD but were significantly more common in patients with SAD were
pain, infection and premenstrual syndrome.
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Prescriptions issued
Table 4 presents the data on
prescriptions issued more often to patients with SAD during the 5 years
studied. To be most meaningful, some of these data are shown in prescriptions
for a particular bodily system, whereas others are subdivided into more
specific types of medication. When prescriptions were grouped by bodily
system, patients with SAD received prescriptions covering more of the 12
bodily systems (median 6 (interquartile range=4-8) . 6 (4-7);
MannWhitney P=0.006); among patients with SAD, 36% received
prescriptions covering eight or more bodily systems, as compared with 20% of
controls.
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Tests and investigations
Three tests and investigations were carried out more frequently on patients
with SAD. Median numbers of full blood counts (MannWhitney
P=0.01) and thyroid function tests and erythrocyte sedimentation
rates (ESRs) (MannWhitney P=0.002 for both) were higher.
During the 5 years, a greater proportion of patients with SAD had thyroid
function tests (42% . 26%,
2=7.92, 1 d.f.,
P=0.005) and ESRs (33%
. 18%,
2=9.55, 1 d.f.,
P=0.002).
Specialist referrals
Three types of specialist referrals were more common among patients with
SAD. Reassuringly, psychiatry/psychology referrals were more common for
patients with SAD, of whom 27.6% were referred as against 8.1%
(MannWhitney P<0.001) of controls. The two other
specialities that had significantly increased numbers of referrals were
physiotherapy (MannWhitney P=0.005) and gynaecology
(MannWhitney P=0.016). Referrals in general were higher among
patients with SAD (see Table
1), with 52% (as against 28% of controls) having three or more
specialist referrals during the 5-year period.
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DISCUSSION |
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These findings are novel and have significance with regard to the diagnosis, aetiology, comorbidity and management of SAD. These issues are potentially wide-ranging and the discussion below will attempt to provide a summary rather than do full justice to all of them.
Analogies with service use in non-seasonal depression
In contrast with SAD, there is a considerable literature on the
presentation, the identification, the treatment and the service use of
patients with other types of depression in primary care settings. Because
these findings constitute comparative data that may be of relevance to our own
study, a very brief précis of some relevant points will follow.
Patients with depression present commonly in primary care but their depression often goes undetected (Paykel & Priest, 1992). Depression frequently is associated with somatic symptoms, especially in primary care settings (Paykel & Priest, 1992; Brody et al, 1995), and not only do somatic presentations render detection of depression less likely (Brody et al, 1995) but patients with depression who somatise are often particularly frequent consulters in primary care (Portegijs et al, 1996). Depressed patients are generally high consumers of health care services. They are high users of primary care services, they receive more tests and investigations, they have more out-patient visits and they are more often admitted to general hospitals (Simon et al, 1995; Rost et al, 1998). It is striking, however, that within this high demand for health care only a very small proportion of the expense relates to the treatment of the depressive disorder itself (Rost et al, 1998).
There are clear similarities between our study's findings and those for non-seasonal depression. Our own study design did not permit comparison of subjects with SAD against subjects with non-seasonal depression, because our initial selection through screening was based on seasonality of symptoms and not on depression, but such a comparison would be potentially edifying.
Other studies of SAD in primary care
Our own group previously has reported increased rates of consultation in a
smaller comparison of 33 patients each against one control
(Eagles et al, 1998),
and only when a larger sample was compared with two controls per case could a
small autumn and winter excess of consultations be demonstrated among patients
with SAD (Andrew et al,
2001). The most striking finding was of an increased rate of
consultation by patients with SAD across the months of the years studied.
Only one other study has looked directly at SAD among patients consulting in primary care. Schlager et al (1995) screened a convenience sample of 303 patients attending a family medicine ambulatory centre in New York state during January and February and found that between 8.9% and 9.6% (the figure depending upon how the SPAQ was interpreted) satisfied the criteria for SAD. Schlager et al (1995) did not attempt to quantify service use but noted that over half of the patients with SAD reported seasonal pain variation.
Other studies have used less direct methods. Blacker et al (1997) found a peak of primary care presentations with major depression in the winter months, although this did not reach statistical significance, and they suspected that any winter excess in depression might be linked to higher rates of infectious illness. Other studies have found peaks of depressive presentations and antidepressant prescribing in winter (Williams & Dunn, 1981; Skegg et al, 1986), although such peaks may occur also during the summer months (Skegg et al, 1986). Thus, hitherto there has been little direct evidence about the presentation of SAD, or the burden for care it imposed, in primary care settings.
Comorbidity of SAD
Anxiety was reported by 72% of the first series of patients with SAD
described by Rosenthal et al
(1984) and may be regarded
more as a central component of the disorder than as a comorbid phenomenon.
Panic disorder previously has been associated with winter depression
(Halle & Dilsaver, 1993)
and the fact that there were nine presentations with palpitations among our
patients with SAD and none among our controls may further testify to this
link.
Premenstrual depression also was reported commonly among Rosenthal et al's (1984) original series, and the relationship between SAD and premenstrual syndrome since has been established further (Maskall et al, 1994). Our patients with SAD presented more commonly than controls with premenstrual problems and were more likely to receive prescriptions for sex hormones. The comorbidity of premenstrual syndrome and SAD may be important to note because seasonal premenstrual syndrome can respond to light therapy (Maskall et al, 1994).
There is good evidence of a link between winter depression and disordered eating, certainly among identified clinical samples (e.g. Blouin et al, 1992). Again, the importance of this association may relate to the response of seasonal bulimia to light therapy (Lam et al, 1994). In our study, although patients with SAD presented with weight gain or binge eating more often than controls did, such presentations were relatively uncommon.
Seasonal pain was reported in Schlager et al's (1995) primary care sample of SAD sufferers and has been described also in about 50% of a clinical sample of patients with SAD (Dilsaver et al, 1993). Our findings of increased presentations with pain and increased analgesic prescriptions among patients with SAD are in accord with those studies. The relationship between pain and depressed mood, however, may not be a seasonal phenomenon (Von Knorring, 1975).
Patients in our study presented more often than controls did with infections and received more prescriptions for antibiotics, and people with SAD can report that they are especially prone to winter infections. Our findings could be seen as related to help-seeking behaviour or may represent a comorbid biological phenomenon. Immune function certainty fluctuates seasonally (Maes et al, 1994) and reduced winter immune function may be mediated through light deprivation via vitamin D (Rosen et al, 1991); sufferers from winter depression have been shown to receive reduced daylight exposure during winter (Espiritu et al, 1994).
Other possible reasons for high service use
Patients with SAD might become high service users because of the SAD itself
or because of associated comorbid conditions, but their service use patterns
may have other explanations. One prosaic possibility is that depressive
symptoms give rise to frequent primary care contact, which facilitates
recognition, investigation and treatment of unrelated conditions that
otherwise would have remained undiagnosed
(Simon et al, 1995).
Depression also may lead to an amplification of symptoms and thus to a greater
propensity to seek, and to expect, medical assistance
(Barsky, 1992). Our own study
design was such that, in order to become a confirmed case of SAD, patients had
to attend an additional interview and it is possible that this served to
select people with SAD who were more focused upon their own health.
Other possible explanations have been explored in a previous paper (Eagles et al, 1998). Hotopf (1994) has suggested that SAD may constitute one component of environmental hypersensitivity, a condition characterised by multiple physical symptoms and somatisation and in which media-popularised diseases of fashion can be adopted readily by the patient. Our method of patient identification they did not self-diagnose and we actively screened and recruited them perhaps makes this view less plausible. It may be that personality factors are of importance. Sufferers of SAD may be more neurotic, with a tendency to adopt an external locus of control (Murray et al, 1995), and these factors may give rise to an amplification of dysphoria and an increased likelihood of seeking medical advice.
Service implications
Patients with SAD are consulting frequently in primary care and are high
users of health care services but, perhaps partly because of the variety of
symptoms with which they present, their SAD goes undiagnosed and untreated;
none of the patients in our study had a diagnosis of SAD and in only a very
few (from what was recorded in their case records) had the possibility ever
been considered. Light therapy has been found to be beneficial for sufferers
of SAD and to have few adverse effects (e.g.
Eastman et al, 1998).
However, study participants often have comprised self-diagnosed volunteers
referred on to specialist centres and this efficacy may not equate to that
among patients in primary care. Our own group's trial
(Wileman et al, 2001)
did not demonstrate superiority of bright white light over dim red light in
patients with SAD identified in primary care, some of the subjects being those
included in the present study. Therefore, before primary care professionals
embark on any attempt at assertive identification of patients
with SAD, it would be important to have evidence that treatment does indeed
lower morbidity among such patients and perhaps, therefore, results in reduced
use of health services.
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Clinical Implications and Limitations |
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LIMITATIONS
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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Received for publication March 2, 2001. Revision received June 29, 2001. Accepted for publication July 2, 2001.
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