60. Seasonal depression and the ‘winter blues’

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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties, the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, or welcome back to the show. Welcome back for another episode. New listeners, old listeners, it is so great to have you here today. Or we're going to be breaking down yet another topic that impacts us in our twenties and diving into some of the psychology and the science behind what happens. So let's get into it today. We're going to talk about seasonal depression. Seasonal depression. It is, I think, such a popular topic. It's become a much more common phrase, which is brilliant. Anything too, I think de stigmatize or expand our understanding of different disorders and illnesses that afflict us is so important. I'm sure for many of our listeners they are probably going into the winter months if you're in the US, if you're in the UK, and for my ELDI listeners, perhaps we're finding ourselves exiting this period of maybe even depression or sadness, low motivation as the summer season begins and we're having some of those classic sunny, old days. Maybe you are a bit of a winter baby, someone who loves the cold, loves the chill, the shorter days, maybe even the snow. That is definitely not the case for myself. I love the sun. I'm such a summer baby, and I have definitely struggled with periodic seasonal depression and found that not only can it be really misunderstood, but sometimes not understood at all, regardless really of where you are in the world, whether you are suffering through a few sullen winter days or enjoying the sunshine. Seasonal depression, I think is an essential concept and experience for us to understand in our twenties and really at all stages in our life. It's essential knowledge. Really the weather in our environment. It impacts our mood in such an interesting, complicated, nuanced way. So we're going to discuss that impact, and we're going to talk about seasonal depression, what it is, why it occurs, what it feels like, and how we can protect ourselves as best as possible from some of the feelings that come along with the dark, sometimes sad winter months. So, buckling, let's jump into some of the psychology, some of the science, the lessons of Sea an all depression. So seasonal depression you've probably heard about it at some stage, maybe in discussions with your friends or in the media TikTok from your workplace, you know, posters warning you about seasonal depression in the winter months. It's I think a really amazing thing that this disorder, which is you know, really it is a disorder, is becoming more understood and becoming acknowledged as something that really does impact quite a few people. And it's not really like a walk in the park. It's not some lesser version of depression. Is very much an emotional state marked by sadness, marked by low motivation, that comes according to the months. But sometimes the science behind it is not well communicated, and I think it can be really beneficial for us to understand from a psycho education perspective, why it is that the seasons, that the weather, that our environment has such a profound influence on our mental health and our mental state at any given time. So seasonal depression is actually a bit of a layman's name or a casual name, and sometimes that can confuse us into thinking it's somewhat of a made up concept, some kind of like fancy spin on normal depression or what we perceive as normal depression, but it is a really serious thing. And the professional name for this experience is seasonal effective disorder, so by the season's effective meaning emotions, and then disorder meaning that it can be classified in the DSM. Someone pointed this out to me the other day that the acronym for seasonal effective disorder is actually SAD, which I think is quite ironic. I don't know who was in charge of naming it, but I think they're spot on. So essentially, season more effective disorder. It's a type of depression that's related to changes in the seasons. Normally, it begins and ends around the same time every year for a person. If you're like most people like myself who experiences this disorder, your symptoms they normally start in autumn and they continue into the winter months. So they start as the sun set. It starts setting earlier and rising later, and it can make you feel really moody. You can feel your energy levels quite quickly plummet. These symptoms, luckily for us, often resolved during the spring and summer months, and it's also incredibly common, really really common, impacting up to like one in ten people. But there was a study done by the National Institute of Mental Health quite recently actually, and yeah, it said one in ten people will have some form of seasonal effective disorder in their life. It's also more common in women than it is in men, and in some areas or countries or regions where not only is there a very significant change in seasons, but those winter months are a lot harsher. Interestingly, when I was researching this, I also found this out. There are actually some people who have almost reverse seasonal effective disorder. So instead of the winter seasons and the winter months, the colder months being the ones in which they experience these symptoms of depression, it's actually the summer months, the warmer months that cause these periods of intense sadness. But that is a lot less common, and we're going to explain why. When we get into the science. You'll see why that's the case in a second. I think one of the big common misconceptions about seasonal depression is that it's just like the winter blues, when the days kind of get darker and colder and we have less sunlight, less daylight, less kind of bright hours to go out and be social, to explore. It's not unusual to experience temporary feelings of tiredness or stress or even anxiety, but seasonal affected disorder is much more serious. It is a form of clinical depression, and the symptoms can last sometimes even beyond those periods of winter or autumn or the colder months, and kind of extend beyond when we would typically see them, which can obviously cause some pretty big problems. The other thing to note, and the other kind of close the way to kind of point out the close relationship between full blown clinical depression and seasonal depression is that it shares almost the exact same symptoms with clinical depression, with the exception that it normally comes and goes with the seasons and with a specific season. In particular, if you're someone who right now thinks they might be experiencing seasonal effective disorder or seasonal depression as it's known more colloquially, these are some of the kind of symptoms or I don't like to say side effects, but the experiences you might be having, So you might be feeling really listless, really sad or down and really unable to pull yourself out of that funk. For it to be kind of deemed as seasonal effective disorder. This has to last for longer than a couple of weeks. You know, everyone has a couple of hard days, especially when it's cold. It's not always an equation for the happiest of moods, but for it to be classified as a disorder, it does have to last a little bit longer than just a few days or, you know, just an afternoon. The other thing we might notice is that we lose interests in the activities that we once enjoyed. We just cannot find the motivation to do them. You have low energy, You feel sluggish, You might be experiencing insomnia or on the flip side, sleeping way too much, have cravings, particularly for high energy foods like sugar and carbs. Have difficulty concentrating. That was a big one for me. And then some of those other symptoms that we can sometimes see you as a bit more severe, feeling really hopeless or worthless or guilty, questioning your worth and your value or your kind of meaning in life. And then again kind of falling into a bit of a pit of despair, almost when those winter months kind of fall on us each year, feeling like this is some inescapable kind of hell for the next a little while, and really struggling to get your mind around that and feel like you can function in this kind of season. Obviously, this can vary from person to person, and these symptoms can also linger for quiet sometimes sometimes, like we said, past the actual season up to five months. But normally, in order to get a diagnosis of seasonal effective disorder, if you go to a professional or a clinician, it does need to be kind of contained in a particular season or in a particular kind of a weather environment, I guess is the best way to put it. So I'm sure we can all see how difficult this may be for our well being. Right If we spend three months or more of the year, depending on where you live, in a state of essentially depression and in a state of mental and physical hibernation where we're unable to manage our everyday lives, it's incredibly difficult to feel optimistic about wanting to do things, wanting to be social, wanting to go out. Like I said before, this is certainly something I've struggled with, and I would even say pretty severely. Obviously, I don't think it's any secret from what I've shared on the show about my experience with antidepressants and anxiety, that this is something that has impacted me at various periods across my life, especially when I used to live in Canberra, which is the capital city of Australia. It gets so cold there. I think for many for you who might be listening overseas, there is this kind of international impression that Australia is this like constantly sunny oasis, which is definitely the case if you're living in some of the northern parts of the country, but in Canberra it's like kind of like smack bang in the middle of all like the mountains and the cold areas of Australia, and we would get these terrible, like bone chilling winters. The sun set at like four thirty pm and rise at like nine. Maybe for those of you who are listening here, I have much longer winters. Doesn't sound very extreme, but for me it was so intense. And while I lived in Canberra, I used to like track the days to the winter solstice, which is the shortest day of the year, and I would track down the days. I remember it was like June thirtieth or something like that, and every year. I would wait for that day, knowing that when it reached that point, things would hopefully and slowly kind of start getting better for me. I just remember this one winter where it was really really hard. There are other things going on in my life at the time, and I would just sit in bed all day and almost feel panicked and anxious when the sun would set and it would get dark, feeling like I had wasted another day, feeling like, oh, I wasn't able to get into the sun, I wasn't able to like go outdoors. And if you can relate to this, then it might be something to consider. It's worth considering whether your kind of lapse and you're fall and you're drop in mood around the cold winter months might actually be, says an all effective disorder. It's not just the winter blues. It might actually be some form of clinical depression, especially if these feelings and symptoms peak during the colder winter months. I think personally, I think this is really exacerbated by the concept of the nine to five work week. You know, we spend every waking hour of sunlight during winter, either in an office or at UNI or in some kind of like indoor building like the nine to five period is often blocked out by some activity. Normally that's work that leaves literally no time before the sunrises and after we clock off. Maybe it's like at half an hour of sunlight during our lunch break. If we can brave the cold weather to like eat outside, that's all we get. We spend our entire days without exposure to natural light on our face and on our skin and on our bodies. This is obviously not how any living creature is meant to be, Like, you're not meant to be indoors without natural sunlight. Like, that's not how our bodies and our brains and our systems were made, that's not how they have evolved. So when we can't access these kind of essentials for life, like the sun, like fresh air, like the outdoors, especially when that's exacerbated by the winter months, when the sun starts setting a lot earlier and rising a lot later and we're kind of working our nine to five jobs or pushing through UNI or pushing through exams, it can be so detrimental. So this is a great segue into our next discussion on why it is that seasonal depression occurs and the science and psychology behind it. Our next partner has a product I use literally every day. I started taking ag One because I've been on a bit of a health journey. I wanted to take better care of my immune system and my gut health. 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All you have to do is visit Athletic Greens dot com slash Gemma again, that's Athletic Greens dot com slash Gemma to take ownership over your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance. So and there are quite a few psychological and biological explanations behind why we might experience seasonal effective disorder or seasonal depression, and a lot of these answers rest in evolutionary psychology. Despite how modern day society operates, you know, filled with work and business and social media and screens, we have to sometimes remember how our bodies and our minds were made to function back when humans were just you know, simple creatures roaming around, focused on food and security, nature, exploring reproduction and survival. These were the activities that our brains were hardwired to do. And those parts of our brains they still exist, they still operate based on the same systems, based on the same processes and biology. And it's these very systems that can explain why when the seasons change, we might experience a shift in mood, such as is the case with seasonal effective disorder. So the first theory is that this form of depression is thought to be caused by changes to the bodies circadian rhythm. This is otherwise known as the body clock, and our circadian rhythm kind of shifts based on the seasons and based on the different times of the year. Circadian rhythm for those of us who don't know what they are, they are physical mental behavioral changes that essentially follow at twenty four hour cycles. So these natural processes normally respond primarily to life and darkness and affect how we behave so they work by so the our circadian rhythm, it essentially works by helping to make sure that the body's processes, whether that is the release of certain hormones, our body temperature, our mood, our wakefulness, our sleep, those processes are optimized at various times during a twenty four hour period to match our environment. So it makes sense that we should be sleeping at night because we do not see in the dark. It is very difficult for us, so as those kind of evolutionary creatures, there's no point being awake. Then it's a great period for restfulness. But when the sun begins to rise, that's a great time to experience a spike in hunger so that we're motivated to go out and hunt, or a spike in wakefulness and in energy. So all of those systems are controlled by our circadian rhythm, and regular cicadian rhythm can have a pretty negative impact on a person's ability to sleep and on our ability to function properly, and it can result in many health problems, such as let's have a guess, seasonal effective disorder. So this rhythm, this internal body clock, it's controlled mostly by our environment, in particular the presence of sun and daylight hours. So when these kind of hours change or shorten because of the winter months, it can cause problems. Alternatively, when we interrupt this normal cicadian rhythm artificially or unnaturally by forcing ourselves to stay awake or something like that, we can also experience mood problems. So a lot of evidence on this relationship comes from studies of shift workers, so people whose sleep periods are out of sync with their cicadian rhythm. Let's think, for example, about nurses. That's such a great example. People who work shift work. Many of them will work at night and then sleep during the day, which contradicts the natural cues we're getting from our environment and our biology and our body clock to sleep at night and then to work, to hunt, to gather during the day. So multiple studies show an increased prevalence of depression in night shift workers. One meta analysis, it's showed that night shift workers are forty percent more likely to develop depression than daytime workers, perhaps because they go against their circadian rhythm and their body clocks are out of whack, causing mood swings, difficulty controlling their emotions, and an irregular release of hormones. So this is what we get to the essential science of the matter, and we put everything together. So the shorter days during the winter months when seasonal depression is most likely to occur, these shorter days they confuse our body clock and lead to many of those symptoms that we've discussed. Another major reason behind the existence and occurrence of this disorder is the production and the release of melatonin. Melatonin is a naturally produced hormone that our brain releases in response to darkness, and for those of us who are familiar with melotonin, it essentially helps us sleep. Luckily, the body naturally produces melatonin at night, and normally it's kind of triggered by darkness and by the sun going down, which is why when we stay on our phones all night, or stay on our phones after the sun's gone down, our brain kind of gets confused and we can experience a poorer quality sleep because our brain hasn't yet released that melatonin because it thinks that we're still active and the sun is still up due to that artificial light source. So the release of melatonin is incredibly important for our sleep and for our As sunrise approaches, the levels of melatonin drop, but as the sun goes down, the levels of melatonin rise. It's why it's known as the dracula of hormones. But if you have seasonal effective disorder, melatonin peaks earlier because the sun sets earlier, and it lingers for longer in the morning, making it harder for you to wake up and leaving you feeling really fatigued and groggy. In a similar vein, it may also be varying levels of serotonin in our brain that cause this drop in mood during the winter months. This disorder is really related to serotonin, which is often known as the happy hormone, and it's often implicated in clinical depression and other types of depression, So it makes sense that it's linked to seasonal effective disorder. Right if you already have an imbalance that can be made worse by all of these other other factors combining. You know, your body clock is off and the melotonin that your body needs is not being released at appropriate times. And it also may just be that we're less able to do the activities that make us happy during the winter weather conditions, being outdoors, being in the sunshine at the beach, going for a lovely hike, Absorbing vitamin D, which is of course important for our bodily functions, seeing our friends, having more time after work to be outside. These are all really crucial and important contributors to our happiness. So when we don't have these because of the weather and because of the dark, and because of the cold, this can also just contribute to our natural behavioral and environmental decline in our mood and our overall well being. So what can we do about it? Obviously humans are very smart, so we have come up with ways to address this. We're going to discuss some of those next. I'm guessing if you are listening to this episode, it's probably because you think you have seasonal depression or you can relate to some of these symptoms that we have discussed, maybe right now, maybe in the past. Luckily, for those of us who seasonal effective disorder is a problem for there are many many ways around it to ensure that we are able to function and live an active, filling life even in the gloomy winter months. Humans. I feel like I don't need to remind you, but we are incredibly adapt you know, there are places in the world that are dark for like sometimes half of the year, like in Norway. So what do these people do? Obviously they have to find ways around it, and these are some of the options that humans have come up with. If you were to go to a therapist or a professional and said I think I have seasonal effective disorder, enlisted some of those symptoms that we talked about, one of the methods they'd probably suggest first to survive seasonal depression. It's called bright light therapy. So this therapy technique, it rests on the assumption of the science we discussed before that the presence an absence of light, mainly sunlight, is the primary contributing factor to seasonal depression. So the aim of this therapy is to resynchronize your sleep pattern, resynchronize your energy and your wakefulness with the day and night cycles that you would prefer. By adding an artificial light source into your daily routine, so it essentially compensates for the lack of exposure to sunlight during winter that may be contributing to major depressive disorders, especially those with seasonal patterns. So it's pretty simple. You sit near this like lightbox or this lamp. It has to be one that mimics natural sunlight, like you can't just have a really bright light from IKEA and has to be a specific type of light, but it mimics natural sunlight. And studies and research has shown that bright light therapy bright light treatment, if you do it consistently first thing in the modern morning, it drastically improves our mood and the symptoms for a vast majority of people with seasonal effective disorder. Pretty amazing, right, Like kind of simple. You know, we just if we don't have enough light, we're not being exposed to sunlight. It's like playing games with our mind and with our mood and without energy. Just add artificial light. Like it's pretty self explanatory. Another effective option is cognitive behavioral therapy or dialectical behavioral therapy, both of which are a form of talk therapy that aims to shift our negative or unhelpful beliefs and ways of thinking, The way that we think about things, the way we perceive and process information, and the thoughts and emotions we attach to These greatly influence how experience the world and our mental state, including, as it has been as it has been suggested by some researchers, our propensity to experience seasonal depression. So if you say things like I hate winter. Winter makes me so depressed, I'm going to feel so depressed, what a therapist might do is try and reframe and reposition those negative thoughts. So even trying to take it down or not saying something like I prefer summer to winter, that can result in a shift in our perception and therefore our shift in our symptoms and in our mood. Because cognitive behavioral therapy for seasonal depression involves retraining your negative thoughts and your negative associations with the darker winter months, it is potentially the most effective treatment because it doesn't just change your environment, as is the case with out of your Light, It actually changes your overall perception and you're thinking, of course, there are also medical solutions and medicinal solutions. I think that's this general perception sometimes that medication for any type of mental health disorder is somehow like cheating or the easy way out. I don't think that's the case at all. I hope you don't think that's the case. It's just another way of taking care of ourselves and assisting our minds and our bodies to deal with the things that we find heart Sometimes we need a bit of extra help. There's no shame in that. So if you are struggling with seasonal effective disorder, sometimes antidepressants can be something your therapist or healthcare professional might suggest. So normally what they'll tell you to take is something called a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, so something like prozac or zoloft or lexapro. If you want more information about this, please do your own research, but also if you want to hear someone else's experience, I did a whole episode on antidepressants and the science behind them. But long story short, if your seasonal effective disorder is in some way caused by lower levels of serotonin, SSRIs like lexipo or others can help get those levels back up to what may be normal, and that results in less of a drop off in motivation and overall shift in mood and well being. In those colder and darker months. So we've discussed medication, we've discussed cognitive solutions and behavioral interventions, but sometimes a change in environment is the best solution and can really help us out. A bit of a dose of the outdoors. Simply going outside can help boost your mood. If you have the opportunity to go somewhere warmer and somewhere brighter, even just for a weekend, go to the go somewhere nice and sunny. I would really recommend it, and the science proves that it would probably help you out. I used to do this all the time during the winter in Canberra. I would drive up to Queensland in the colder months for a few weeks during my UNI breaks. Honestly, game changer. It was such a game changer when I was dealing with seasonal depression. You know, any kind of excursion, any kind of vacation, it's most likely going to just boost your mental health overall, and a massive benefit if there's sunshine involved. Even finding a few minutes to walk outside just to help you get more natural light, or sit near a window when you're at work, when you're at UNI, wherever you are, can be really helpful. Another thing I would do would be replacing the things that I really love doing in summer was something that I could do in winter so that I didn't have to lose that sense of enjoyment and my hobbies. You know, if my favorite summer I love swimming in the ocean, but having a swim in an indoor pool, going to the sauna, going to the spa, that's also great and it also brings me a lot of joy. If you really like going for hikes out in summertime, based on where you live, you could still do that. Maybe, you know, chuck on your big old puff a jacket, go for a little walk around, put a scarf on, put your headphones on, grab a coffee, make an adventure of it. Find activities that still bring you joy, or planned for things to look forward to in the future, to look forward to when it gets warmer, like a vacation or going home to see your family, anything that's going to make you feel optimistic and kind of bolster your mood and your overall wellbeing and your mental outlook on life. Finally, I will say, don't blame yourself. I think there's often a massive stigma and a massive culture of experiencing any form of mental illness or a disorder like seasonal depression, and feeling like it's because we're not doing enough, because we're lazy, because YadA, YadA, YadA. The list goes on and on. I'm not going to entertain them. It is absolutely not your fault. This is natural. It's a change in the weather, it's a change in your body clock, in your melatonin levels, in your ability to do things that you love. It's in no way your fault. But I do hope that by being educated a little bit more about the science, you found it useful. Sometimes psycho education and knowledge can be incredibly empowering, so that we have a better understanding of what it actually is and a better understanding of the science and the psychology behind these things, why these things occur. And I also hope that if you are someone who is experiencing seasonal depression right now, that you feel a little bit less alone. I've been through it, so many of my friends have you know that stuff we talked about, One in ten people will have some form of seasonal effective disorder throughout their life, So you are definitely not alone. There are definitely things to get through it. And you know the best thing about the seasons is that they always change. And there will be summer again, there will be sunlight again. Thank you so much for listening. If you made it this far, you're my best friend. Thank you for listening to the show. Thank you for supporting the show and joining for another episode. If you found this helpful, if this was something that you enjoyed, please feel free, if you feel cool to do so, to leave a five star review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. Make sure to follow only if you want to, so that you know when new episodes are released. And thank you for listening along. I will be back on Friday for another episode of the Psychology of Your Twenties.