Mystery Case Monday: Weather Changes Moods

Welcome back to Mystery Case Monday! We will be posting a hypothetical case every week to get our pre-health students thinking about various clinical issues and the anatomical/physiological causes that underlie them. Join us in the comments section to share your insights and tentative diagnoses, then check back on Friday to read about the diagnosis and recommended treatments of these cases.

This week, our hypothetical patient is a 33-year-old woman who is a professor at SDSM&T. Three years ago, she moved to Rapid City, SD, from her hometown, Sarasota, FL. A few months into her first semester, she began feeling unusually depressed and lethargic. She had not experienced these symptoms in the past and had difficulty in processing these feelings. She began sleeping more than usual and felt more irritable than was normal for her. After her first year of teaching, she stopped having these feelings and assumed that her issues were related to adjusting to her new home. However, her symptoms reappeared during the fall semester of her second year and again subsided by the end of the spring semester. She is now in her third year and is again experiencing feelings of lethargy, depression, and excessive sleeping. She is having increasing difficulty in concentrating and has gained 25 pounds since moving to South Dakota.

Thought Questions:

What is the most likely diagnosis for this patient?

Which additional diagnostic tests would confirm this diagnosis?

What are the anatomical structures involved in this clinical issue?

What are the potential underlying causes for this condition?

What is a good recommended course of treatment for our hypothetical patient?

Be sure to leave your comments below and check back at the end of the week to see what our hypothetical patient had and what caused it!