Winters in the Edmonton area, or the number of consecutive days with temperatures below freezing, are at least 10 days shorter than they were nearly 75 years ago, data published by researchers at the University of Lethbridge shows.
For those with winter-specific seasonal affective disorder (SAD) — a condition that produces the usual symptoms of depression as well as irritability, cravings for carb-heavy food, and feelings of guilt and hopelessness when the winter season takes hold — shorter winters might be welcome news.
One of the more prevalent theories for what causes winter SAD, especially in Canada, is the lack of sunlight during the winter months because sun exposure helps the brain produce serotonin, a chemical that works to regulate our moods, appetite, and more.
In 2018 the Canadian Psychological Association reported that as much as 10 per cent of all depression diagnoses could be attributed to SAD, and about 15 per cent of all Canadians will likely experience SAD in their lifetime.
Although winter SAD is thought to be much more common, individuals can also experience SAD that's specific to summer.
Norman Rosenthal, the American psychiatrist who coined SAD in 1984, told the Washington Post last year that while the symptoms of summer-specific SAD also include the common symptoms of depression, summer SAD differs from its cold counterpart in that those with summer SAD often experience reduced appetite, insomnia, and feel distressed or manic.
With the winter season in Alberta trending towards being shorter and shorter over time, therapeutic counsellor Alissa Caskey said she thinks it's possible those with winter-specific SAD could experience reduced symptoms, while those with summer-specific SAD could be in for the long-haul.
“Not to say that I'm a researcher in climate change, but I do see that that would impact people,” said Caskey, one of the team of 30 registered counsellors and psychologists with Rivers Edge Counselling on Tache Street.
“If we have shorter winters, if we have milder winters, I think the dynamics of winter SAD will change,” Caskey said. “We probably won't have as long of impacts of SAD for the winter time, such as that deep depression, but shorter winters could mean that our cytokine could shift and we could experience sort of the opposite side where if we're having exposed daylight for too long, it could increase our anxiety and our sleep cycle might shift to the opposite way.”
Cytokine, Caskey explained, is the name of a group of proteins that both help cause and control inflammation. Sunlight exposure causes cytokine proteins to release in the body.
“Our cytokine response is sort of integrated into our immune system and it's kind of relevant to the context of a seasonal affective disorder because it increases inflammation [and] it can exaggerate a lot of depressive symptoms,” she said.
Although light exposure is one of the most common treatments for winter SAD as it helps us produce serotonin, Caskey said prolonged exposure, like what would be possible when the spring and summer seasons get longer over time, could lead to a situation where our body produces too much serotonin, which can negatively affect our sleep cycles and produce anxiety.
“Sometimes it's too much and we experience anxiety because we don't get the ability to have that regulated sleep and wake cycle, which gives us you the right amount of melatonin, and when the two of them get thrown off we tend to experience either anxiety or depression or sometimes we get both.”
How do you treat summertime sadness?
Brandi Gruninger, a registered psychologist and the owner and director of Evolution Psychology in St. Albert and Sherwood Park, said that her practice is to treat those with winter- and summer-specific SAD the same as she would any case of depression, which, depending on the person, involves medication, regular check-ins with a family doctor, and professional therapy.
“The problem with SAD and diagnosing it is it looks like regular depression and anxiety, so in practice we don't spend a lot of time really making that diagnosis and determining if it's SAD or not,” she said. “The treatment is the same, the difference is the causes.”
“SAD is kind of an unknown but probably quite biological cause — people kind of either have it or they don't — whereas regular depression can be caused by many factors [as] there's a biological component for some people, there's a psychological component for some people in the way that they interpret things, and then there's an environmental or a social component for people.”
Gruninger said cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is one of the most effective types of therapy and counselling when it comes to treating depression.
“When we look at our model [of CBT], we basically look at what are the beliefs or thoughts that a person has, and how does that correspond to the emotions that they have being depression or anxiety, and then the behaviours,” she said.
For example, if in the summertime you are depressed because it's summer, you hate the heat, maybe you hate your body... maybe you don't have any money to go out and do all the things that other people are doing and you're comparing yourself, or maybe you just don't like to go outside, we're going to look at what are the behaviours that you are engaging in that are either making this worse for yourself or making it better for yourself.”
After identifying an individual's thoughts and beliefs about themselves, as well as the behaviours they engage it that are negatively affecting their situation, cognitive behavioural therapy calls for determining manageable ideas that can help a person make positive changes.
“It's a matter of managing and coping,” Gruninger said, adding that another key aspect of coping is to practice radical acceptance, which in simple terms is identical to the message of the Serenity Prayer: accept the things you cannot change, have the courage to change things you can, and have the wisdom to know the difference.
“When there's something that you have to accept even though it sucks, we call that radical acceptance,” she said.
“You can't change the season.”
