60. Seasonal depression and the ‘winter blues’

With many of us entering the colder, winter months, understanding what seasonal depression is and how it impacts our mood, energy levels, appetite and mental well-being is crucial. This week we break down the science and psychology behind seasonal affective disorder and how we can overcome the ‘winter blues’ brought on by the colder months.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
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,

(00:28):
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.

(00:50):
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

(01:11):
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.

(01:32):
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

(01:57):
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

(02:19):
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

(02:40):
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.

(03:06):
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,

(03:27):
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

(03:48):
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

(04:08):
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

(04:31):
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.

(04:54):
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

(05:19):
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

(05:40):
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

(06:03):
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

(06:25):
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

(06:46):
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

(07:10):
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

(07:31):
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

(07:55):
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,

(08:17):
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

(08:40):
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

(09:05):
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

(09:25):
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

(09:48):
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,

(10:11):
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

(10:34):
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

(11:00):
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

(11:23):
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

(11:44):
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

(12:05):
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

(12:26):
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

(12:49):
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.

(13:10):
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

(13:33):
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

(13:56):
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

(14:17):
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

(14:37):
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.

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So and there are quite a few psychological and biological
explanations behind why we might experience seasonal effective disorder or

(16:32):
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

(16:55):
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

(17:18):
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

(17:40):
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

(18:03):
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

(18:25):
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

(18:46):
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

(19:07):
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

(19:30):
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

(19:51):
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

(20:12):
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

(20:33):
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

(20:54):
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

(21:16):
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

(21:38):
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

(22:00):
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,

(22:21):
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

(22:41):
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

(23:02):
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

(23:24):
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

(23:47):
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

(24:08):
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

(24:30):
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

(24:53):
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

(25:17):
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

(25:39):
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

(26:02):
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

(26:24):
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

(26:46):
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

(27:10):
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

(27:33):
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

(27:56):
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

(28:16):
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.

(28:39):
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,

(29:02):
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

(29:23):
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

(29:43):
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

(30:05):
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,

(30:25):
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

(30:47):
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

(31:08):
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

(31:33):
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

(31:54):
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

(32:16):
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

(32:40):
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

(33:01):
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

(33:22):
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.

(33:45):
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.