Does Seasonally Affective Disorder exist?

When the days get shorter and the sun seems to disappear earlier day by day, when the January skies are grey in grey and when February seems an endless eternal night, some of us develop seasonally affective disorder, also referred to as SAD. Once Christmas and the New Year’s Celebrations are over and done with, winter just never seems to end. Some people then develop symptoms of depression, even though they are usually not suffering from this debilitating condition. Why is that the case? Biologically speaking, our levels of serotonin – the neurotransmitter that is held responsible for our mood regulation – change. At the same time, our melatonin levels also change: Melatonin is the hormone that regulates our sleep patterns. We feel sleepy during the day and find it difficult to get up in the morning. With the sun vanishing earlier from our daily lives and returning later in the morning, our bodies also go into hibernation. So yes, seasonally affective disorder does indeed exist. We should thus not be surprised when our moods are lower in the winter months and our lives sometimes seem grey and meaningless. How can we combat the winter blues, though? As with a lot of other challenges that our minds have to deal with: it is always best just to welcome these symptoms into our lives. Acceptance offers just that little space of control over our lives that we seem to lose when we feel sad and depressed. It is always better to read a good book on the sofa in those long winter months rather than continuoulsy check our apps for the most recent updates in sunset and sunrise times (as I sometimes do), hoping that magically the sun will set at 21:30 tomorrow rather than at 16:30, as it currently does in my timezone. The most important thing, however, is to realise that you are not clinically depressed: SAD does affect your mood, but it is easy to remedy it by discussing it with a good mental health professional and developing a plan to overcoming it.

Before we even know it, spring will be on its way, we will frolic again in the springtime meadows, and then summer will bring another psychological challenge: Reverse seasonal affective disorder! For those of you who suffer from that, here is a link to it: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brain-babble/201501/reverse-seasonal-affective-disorder-sad-in-the-summer