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Speaker 0 00:00:01 Single digit temperatures, 5:00 PM, sunsets post holiday, season blues and salty dorm room floors from snow boots. Just a few things that trigger and Northwestern students, winter depression. It's a real thing, winter depression, but technically it's called seasonal affective disorder. AKA sad. A lot of college students feel a bit more down in the winter time. So I want to know how to tell the difference between just some Evanston, winter blues and actual depression. So I sat down with Dr. Katherine Hanson, a psychologist at Swedish hospital in Chicago to learn more.
Speaker 1 00:00:47 All right. So let's start with the basics. What is seasonal affective disorder?
Speaker 2 00:00:52 Um, seasonal affective disorder is a type of depression, um, and it tends to be, uh, triggered by, um, shorter days. And sometimes I think colloquially, we tend to be a little more dismissive of seasonal affective disorder. Oh, it's just the winter blahs or, um, the really, it can be, it ranges from mild to severe. It can be a fairly significant type of mental health issue that can really negatively impact people's lives. So I'm so glad we're getting the opportunity to talk about it today.
Speaker 1 00:01:25 Yeah. So how do you know if you have seasonal depression or you just have those Monday blues, like I'm not really feeling it today versus something you should go to a psychologist to discuss.
Speaker 2 00:01:38 Right. So again, it follows tends to really follow this seasonal pattern. And for those that really do have seasonal affective disorder, it will tend to, for the majority of people, it will tend to start kind of late fall, early winter. And over the years, people will recognize, wow. You know, after Thanksgiving I just kind of start to take a dive or whatever the timeframe is for them, but it's fairly predictable. Um, and people start to know that about themselves. Like, boy, I really have a tough time. Um, Monday glues, my kids often refer to the Sunday scaries. Um, those things tend to be a little more, um, temporary. So you might be kind of anxious or depressed one day. Um, but it will pretty much resolve within the next day or two.
Speaker 1 00:02:25 You mentioned, you know, light has a huge impact on this in places with less daylight. Are there more people who suffer from this?
Speaker 2 00:02:35 Yeah, that's a risk factors is actually through, if you live further from the equator, we do tend to see people there's a higher prevalence. So in the United States actually seasonal affective disorder impacts about 5% of the adult population. The body's response to that. And then the brain's response to that can be, um, can kind of put us into some, uh, depressive space. So some of that may be related to, to serotonin, which is a neuro-transmitter or a chemical in the brain, um, that really is responsible for, or one of them that is responsible for mood. Um, and so we do feel like there may be a link between, um, sunlight or daylight and serotonin. And if they're, you know, less, less light, less daylight may cause decreases in serotonin, which can be problematic, um, and lead to mood disorders such as depression and seasonal affective depression in this space.
Speaker 1 00:03:38 So what are some of those signs or symptoms that you may be suffering from seasonal effective?
Speaker 2 00:03:43 There really can be a lot of fatigue. Um, so, and you can, if you're sleeping a lot, in fact, you may even be oversleeping. You'll still feel very tired and fatigued. Um, sometimes there's weight gain, which can happen to all of us, um, eating comfort food this time of year, but up it's a real craving for food, especially carbohydrates. Um, that can, uh, that can also be another symptom when
Speaker 1 00:04:09 You mentioned oversleeping. Like how do you tell if you're just completely overworked and tired, even, even for the doctors working in the hospital? Like, how can you tell if you're just overworked and you're, you're burnt out from your job or from,
Speaker 2 00:04:25 Yeah, that's a great question because I mean, sleep looks different at different stages in the lifespan. You know, we know teenagers, young adults, college students probably need more sleep. Your brain is still developing during that time of life. Um, and older adults tend to need less, um, and their sleep patterns are a little different. Um, I think the main thing to kind of keep an eye on is, especially in this conversation of seasonal affective disorder, I think is when you have had quite a bit of sleep, do you then feel fairly rested? Are you able to like, does it jump
Speaker 1 00:04:59 Back into it? You feel better
Speaker 2 00:05:01 Afterwards. Yeah. And if you, if you were sleeping a lot, but still feeling incredibly fatigued and like you could sleep all day. I mean, people say that, but really where they could sleep all day, then we want to kind of keep an eye out for high. Is there a seasonal affective, uh, component to this and are we moving into depression territory?
Speaker 1 00:05:30 So how do you get that boost in serotonin melatonin? Like what are some typical treatments?
Speaker 2 00:05:36 Well, there's no real way to prevent, um, seasonal affective disorder. I mean, that's just going to kind of come, but there are some pretty effective ways to potentially treat it. Um, so we have kind of three major methods of treatment for seasonal affective disorder. And I think the first line treatment is something called phototherapy, which is a Lightbox, it's a specific kind of device that emits, um, a certain amount of power or lumens. And you're supposed to sit like a few feet away. You do it fairly early in the morning, kind of very within the first hour of waking up. And that can mimic kind of really alerting your system to, to light and daylight. I mean it also another type of treatment for, um, seasonal, effective disorder are the treatments that we often use for major depressant, um, which are like antidepressants. A third method of treatment would be, um, psychotherapy, especially cognitive behavioral therapy, you know, kind of trying to make sure that there are there healthy behaviors that are going on, um, trying to help with motivation a little bit on that can also be another really effective way of treating seasonal affective disorder.
Speaker 1 00:06:54 It seems like ever since COVID everyone kinda is more anxiety, increased depression, just not feeling it, you know, all jobs and students, you know, you know, working from home, doing school from home, a lot more stress. Do you think there can be such a thing as like quarantine affective disorder or like COVID induced depression, is that it could an event or, you know, at this point, what two years now, a two year long events have like the same or similar effect.
Speaker 2 00:07:30 Yeah. I mean, that's a great question. And I mean, the short answer to your question is yes. I mean, do we have a diagnosis like that? No. But if you think about the ways in which COVID, um, kind of came into our lives and of course early on and now, um, there's a lot of anxiety around, well, I don't want to get sick or I don't want to get other people. I love sick. Um, and that creates a lot of anxiety. The way to manage from a public health standpoint, COVID has been to pull back isolate quarantine, do all those things, which are really helpful in my mind for, because we're in the middle of a public health emergency still, but it really ends up, it has undermined some of our most effective coping mechanisms, which are to
Speaker 2 00:08:22 Socialize, to do things, to get out. So, I mean, if you are, we're stuck in this kind of really between a rock and a hard place, which is, yeah, we know we need to do these things to keep one another safe, to keep ourselves safe, um, to protect our community. Um, but if you're starting to feel depressed, it's, it's, it's, it's been a little bit of a frustrating time. I have to say as a therapist, myself and with my colleagues of like, ah, you know, some of the things we would really encourage people to do some of those behavioral activation. Cause you can't cope that. Yeah. We're kind of out of luck. So we have to get a little more creative,
Speaker 1 00:09:06 Especially like have you particularly seen or diagnosed more people with depression now than before the,
Speaker 2 00:09:13 Um, we've seen a threefold increase in depressive disorders, threefold. Wow. Um, more in younger adults than older adults. Yeah. It's just been hard. I think a lot of people just kind of go, oh, well, you know, it's just, this is the way winter is for me. Um, but I think it's winter is a season. It's a quarter of our year, a quarter of our lives. And to just kind of say, well, too bad, I'm just going to put up with it and deal with it. The stoic, um, there may be some really actually effective ways of making you feel a lot better. And so I just encourage people to take their mental health really seriously and, um, seek out support and help for that. Um, if that's something they're experiencing
Speaker 0 00:10:06 For w N U R news, I'm Angelina camp, O'Neil.
