“’Tis The Season To Feel Jolly” is a phrase has its origins in a 1862 Christmas carol, “Deck the Halls.” The song dates back to the sixteenth century. It wasn’t always associated with Christmas; the melody comes from a Welsh winter song called “Nos Galan,” which is actually about New Year’s Eve.
Although many people feel lots of happiness and joy during the holiday season, for a number of people, this time of year brings sadness. Perhaps memories of a bad childhood, loss of loved ones in the past during this time of year, divorce/separation causing feelings of extreme loneliness…these and other reasons have people feeling down and blue.
It is important that we all periodically perform a “Self-Check” on your own mental health. When we think about health checks, our minds will immediately go to the physical aspects of our health: Blood pressure, lab tests, cancer screenings etc. As there are really no objective tests to our mental health this makes assessing the mental health status more challenging.
There is a very old mental health test that is still used called the “Zung Depression Scale”. This can readily be found online and it basically consists of answering 20 questions on a 1-4 scale. The online test can be automatically scored and you will be given a designation as to whether there is no, slight, moderate or severe depression.
I know it is becoming more and more difficult to obtain a timely primary care appointment but if you find that your self-check produces a not-s0-good mental health status, try to get seen in short order. Your doctor has a number of potential strategies to help you feel better.
There are many people that suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder (“SAD”) that occurs post-holidays so please “self-check” your own mental health soon.
My deceased Mom’s favorite singer was Judy Garland, the Wizard of Oz’ Dorothy. Ms. Garland had well documented mental illness and addictions and she died at age 47. Here is one of her famous songs, “Have Yourself A Merry Christmas”.
