tern. For example, an individual may have seasonal manias, but his or her depressions
do not regularly occur at a specific time of year.
A. There has been a regular temporal relationship between the onset of manic, hypo-
manic, or major depressive episodes and a particular time of the year (e.g., in the
fall or winter) in bipolar I or bipolar II disorder.
Note:  Do not include cases in which there is an obvious effect of seasonally related
psychosocial stressors (e.g., regularly being unemployed every winter). 
B. Full remissions (or a change from major depression to mania or hypomania or vice
versa) also occur at a characteristic time of the year (e.g., depression disappears
in the spring).
C. In the last 2 years, the individual’s manic, hypomanic, or major depressive episodes
have demonstrated a temporal seasonal relationship, as defined above, and no
non-seasonal episodes of that polarity have occurred during that 2-year period.
D. Seasonal manias, hypomanias, or depressions (as described above) substantially
outnumber any nonseasonal manias, hypomanias, or depressions that may have
occurred over the individual’s lifetime.
Note:  This specifier can be applied to the pattern of major depressive episodes in
bipolar I disorder, bipolar II disorder, or  major depressive disorder, recurrent. The
essential feature is the onset and remission of major depressive episodes at char-
acteristic times of the year. In most cases, the episodes begin in fall or winter and
remit in spring. Less commonly, there may be recurrent summer depressive epi-
sodes. This pattern of onset and remission of episodes must have occurred during
at least a 2-year period, without any nonseasonal episodes occurring during this