In the rainier parts of the world, like the Pacific Northwest, it’s common to get SAD during the winter. No, that doesn’t mean you’re sad. SAD stands for Seasonal Affective Disorder, a type of depression related to the winter and autumn months.
“Many people feel ‘down’ or have the ‘winter blues’ when the days get shorter in the fall and winter and feel better in the spring when longer daylight hours return,” says the National Institute of Mental Health.
The main cause of this chilly depression is often a lack of serotonin. Serotonin is a message-transporting chemical that travels throughout your body, affecting your mood and sleep. Wintertime, often a season of snow sports and gift-giving, gives most people the serotonin-filled holiday spirit. However, this isn’t always the case, particularly for people who live farther away from the serotonin-creating sunlight of the equator. For some, this festive mood is overshadowed by the poor turn their mental health takes from November to March.
Although many people aren’t aware of this, most can tell their overall mood is lower during the colder season. Ida B. Wells High School counselor Danny Bradach says, “Fall and winter are my two favorite seasons… but when every single day it’s [raining] and gray… just makes me feel kind of low energy.”
This is a common experience for people, whether or not they have SAD. Research has been done linking less sunlight and shorter days to chemical changes in your body, negatively impacting your emotions and possibly removing serotonin from your brain. According to the American Psychiatric Association, “About 5% of adults in the U.S. experience SAD and it typically lasts about 40% of the year.”
“It’s kind of hard to get up in the mornings… specifically when it’s dark outside, but also when it’s cold, because we don’t really have great heating in my house,” says IBW freshman Karys Boyce. “[It’s] freezing in my room and I don’t want to get out of bed and it’s also dark enough that there’s no natural light to wake me up.” To sum it up, says Boyce, “Winter is bad.”
Going for days on end without any sunlight can be taxing on your mind and body. One popular recommendation is to use a lightbox, a flat-screen lit up from the inside, that doctors have started using in recent years to treat SAD. It’s not the same as natural light from the sun, but light boxes can mimic the serotonin your brain craves from sunlight. Most people who use them sit next to their light box for around 30 minutes daily, usually in the mornings. According to the National Institute of Health, around 60-80% of people diagnosed with SAD have improved with light therapy.
However, light boxes can be expensive. Instead, simply sitting in a bright room with many windows or walking outside can greatly boost your serotonin levels. Getting exercise, having good sleep hygiene and eating enough nutritious foods also produce endorphins in your body, which are similar hormones to serotonin, that make you feel happier.
Reflecting on tips to help deal with SAD, Boyce says, “One thing that I found really helpful… is having a wardrobe that makes you feel warm and makes you feel fashionable… how I dress seriously affects the way I feel.”
SAD is a struggle for many people during the colder months, but if you take care of your body and mind, it can be significantly easier to cope with the effect that wintertime has on our mental health. Dr. Madeleine Lansky, a California-based youth psychologist, says “There are chemicals in our brains that help us relax, digest, be happy, be connected with each other, and then there are some chemicals that tell us when to sleep or hibernate, because we’re mammals.”
So far, SAD isn’t completely curable, but if we pay more attention to our mental health during the winter instead of ignoring this natural reaction, we can become happier.
