Seasonal changes affect more than just our wardrobes or what hearty meal we decide to put on our plate on cold days. They impact our mental health significantly.
Many people experience feelings of sluggishness and low mood during colder months.
Clinical psychologist Dr Seleme Melato says if these symptoms are mild and go away in a few days, you’re experiencing winter blues. However, when they are long-lasting, they are a type of depression known as seasonal affective disorder (SAD), which is linked to seasonal changes and is most common during winter.
“In winter, people would feel more serious symptoms of either depression or anxiety and even schizophrenia, and that’s what we call SAD,” says Melato.
“With the winter blues, how you know the difference is if the symptoms are mild and they are passing. But with SAD, the symptoms are more intense, frequent, and debilitating and happen over a prolonged period of time. It’s okay to be kind of down after a great weekend and Monday’s not great, but by Tuesday, Wednesday, you’re getting better.
“That’s not depression. You’ll be aware of yourself, especially if you’ve been diagnosed before with any type of a disorder. You’d be aware that it’s been like more than a week and it’s about two weeks and instead of feeling better, you feel like: ‘I’m getting worse. I’m getting more fatigued. I’m getting more sluggish. It’s very hard to get out of bed, excessive sleep’.”
She says when a person says they feel like they need to hibernate, what they are actually doing is withdrawing socially, which is a symptom of SAD.
Sleep hygiene matters the most. Try to sleep at the same time and try to set the clock for the same time to wake up
— Dr Seleme Melato, Clinical psychologist
Melato, who was speaking during an SA Depression and Anxiety Group (Sadag) Q&A online session recently, says SAD affects people with chronic mental illnesses.
“What happens is they are predisposed because they already have the disorders. An example is bipolar disorder. How it gets diagnosed, together with SAD, is most especially towards the end of winter, which is August and September.
“People with bipolar disorders can become either more manic or hypomanic, meaning that either they’re going to be very bewildered, sometimes they’re aggressive, they don’t make sense of what they are saying, or they become more depressed,” she says.
“You find them reaching a point of hopelessness to a point of suicidal ideation… If we were to talk about major depression, people would be put on antidepressants and with anxiety, it’s anti-anxiety medication and then with bipolar, it’s a combination of both.
“You throw SAD in the mix, it means that a person would be on a combination of all this medication. But there are also other things that a person would be put on to help. There’s also the use of the red light therapy, and there’s also psychotherapy.”
She says SAD affects people aged 20 years and older and affects more women than men, but most importantly, it affects people who have been diagnosed with other mental health disorders.
Melato says teaching people with SAD how to take care of themselves is important. “You are at home, there’s no energy, you haven’t been sleeping, you are exhausted, or you have to wake up and go into the office,” says Melato.
“Small things like setting an alarm, making sure that it wakes you up, and doing a bit of stretching immediately after you wake up, before getting out of bed.
“You open the windows, you open the curtains. That is very important because this is an affective disorder, especially in winter, it is also exacerbated by the lack of vitamin D, which we get from the sun… Eat a nutritious meal, that is very important. Stay away from caffeine because it causes these slumps and it gets us into this vicious cycle of highs and lows. Stay away from alcohol and drugs because they will make your situation worse.”
She says getting enough sleep is important. “Sleep hygiene matters the most. Try to sleep at the same time and try to set the clock for the same time to wake up,” Melato advises.
“The era of technology has brought with it a different challenges, especially towards mental health, where people are not aware of screen time. If somebody sets up a time to sleep, maybe at 9pm, but they sit on their phone, they are scrolling, doom scrolling, actually.
“It’s not like there’s anything they’re looking at, but they’re doom scrolling, maybe up until 11pm... It’s going to affect how they feel the following day because their sleep routine was disturbed. It means you also need to put your phone away on time ... an hour before you sleep,” warns Melato.
She says SAD becomes better when winter ends, but only in people who have been diagnosed with it only and not together with other major disorders.
Sadag’s call centre and volunteers manager, Tracy Feinstein, encourages everybody to keep a journal. “Managing your mental wellbeing is incredibly important, and that’s where Sadag comes in. The counsellors are there, ready and waiting to talk to you.”
Melato gives some tips to help support people diagnosed with SAD:
Compassion: It is at the foundation of all of us.
We need to educate ourselves: It’s very important that we try and understand what SAD is so that we can be able to help others.
There’s an important aspect within support that says there’s always a need to lend a hand: We should always be prepared to help but you won’t know how to help if you don’t know what’s happening.
Check up on somebody: Ask how are you feeling today? Is there anything that I can do for you? Do you need help with anything? It goes a long way.
We should be able to help the person understand themselves better: Sometimes, some people might be really slipping into a serious depressive episode and they cannot feel it because they’re just used to telling themselves: “I’m feeling low, I’m fatigued, I’m sluggish”.
Journal: Encourage people to jot it down. It helps a lot in helping them keep track of what is happening.
