Vitamin D deficiency symptoms: Depression is linked to low levels of the sunshine vitamin

The NHS recommends everybody in the UK to take vitamin D supplements daily from October to March every year. This is because more people spend time indoors and covered up in winter. How is vitamin D created?

In The British Journal of Psychiatry, researcher determined if there was any relationship between vitamin D and depression.

A systematic review and meta-analysis of numerous trials were conducted, which included data from 31,424 participants.

The researchers noted: “Lower vitamin D levels were found in people with depression compared with controls.”

What’s depression?

The Royal College of Psychiatrists explained that everyone has times in their lives when they feel “fed up or miserable”.

It’s usually due to a particular reason, and it doesn’t interfere too much with daily life.

If these feelings linger for weeks or months, and they start to affect every area of your life, you may have depression.

Signs of depression can include the following:

• Feel unhappy, miserable, down, depressed – this feeling just won’t go away and can be worse at a particular time of day, often first thing in the morning
• Can’t enjoy anything
• Lose interest in seeing people and lose touch with friends
• Can’t concentrate properly and find it harder to make decisions
• Lose your self-confidence
• Feel guilty and unworthy
• Become pessimistic
• Start to feel hopeless, and perhaps even suicidal

Depression can be triggered by distressing events, such as bereavement, relationship breakdown or losing a job.

“If your life circumstances mean that you live alone or have no friends or family around, you may be more likely to become depressed,” the Royal College of Psychiatrists stated.