The Dark Days of Winter
It’s easy to peel back the curtains on a winter morning and lose all hope. The skies are steely grey. The glass in the window is cold to the touch. Icy winds are bending the trees and fluttering the street lights. It hardly seems worth getting out of bed. If every winter you find yourself thinking that work will get along fine without you or that you don’t really need groceries, you could be suffering from seasonal affective disorder (SAD). And while you can’t change the weather, you can get help.
The most common form of SAD is winter-onset depression (although there are patients that suffer from summer-onset depression). The symptoms of winter-onset SAD are similar to those of other depressions and usually begin in October or November and clear up in March or April. If you’re worried about SAD ask yourself some of the following questions: When’s the last time you saw your friends and family? Have you been grumpy or short with people at work or school for the past few months? Are you drinking too much? Eating too much? Feeling tired all time? Do you feel like this happens to you every winter?
What causes it?
It’s hard to know what causes certain people to feel depressed in the winter but it probably has a lot to do with not getting enough sunlight. Low levels of sunlight can disrupt your internal body clock which tells you when you should be asleep or awake. It can also tinker with brain chemicals that affect your mood and energy like melatonin and serotonin.
Who’s at risk?
Studies have shown that women are more likely to suffer from seasonal affective disorder than men. Not surprisingly, living in the far north (or the far south if you’re reading this on a glacier in Argentina) means less sunlight and more cases of seasonal affective disorder. As with many types of depression, having a family member that suffers in winter means that you might, too.
So what can you do about it?
Before we get to the medical treatments, here are some winter survival tips that are worth a try:
-
Let the sunshine in. Open up the blinds and park yourself by the window for as long as it’s light out.
-
Brave the cold. Take a walk at lunch or find a sunny bench and sit for as long as you can take it.
-
Exercise, exercise, exercise. It relieves stress and anxiety and makes you feel better about yourself.
If none of the above help, you might need to seek treatment. Here’s a rundown of some of the things your doctor might recommend:
-
Light therapy – It turns out that sitting near bright white fluorescent light for 30 to 90 minutes a day can help activate brain chemicals that the dark days of winter can’t. The lamps are encased in a box which filters out UV radiation and protects your skin. Your physician can help you select a good light box and determine what intensity, duration, and times of day are going to work best for you.
-
Medication – Antidepressants have proven helpful in treating severe symptoms of seasonal affective disorder.
-
Counseling – Talking to someone regularly can help you work on negative thoughts and patterns of behaviors that are making you feel worse than winter should.
For more information about treatment of SAD, check out one of these great overviews:
American Academy of Family Physicians - Seasonal Affective Disorder
American Psychiatric Association - Let's Talk About Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
Mayo Clinic - Seasonal affective disorder (SAD)
National Alliance on Mental Illness - Seasonal Affective Disorder