Take our Depression Test

Find a therapist to overcome depression

It’s been a very long winter for those of us who live in the northeast United States. We’ve had several big snowstorms—one of which left me stuck in Arizona for several days—and a major arctic outbreak that resulted in freezing temperatures for weeks. Some states experienced their coldest winter in decades, and there were even reports from Florida of iguanas freezing and falling out of trees.

But winter didn’t just bring freezing temperatures; it also brought with it a wave of seasonal depression, or what some call seasonal affective disorder, or appropriately SAD. SAD affects about 5 percent of adults, and milder forms of “winter blues” affect up to 20 percent of people. It is most common in higher latitudes, like New Hampshire, and less common in places like Florida, where it’s typically warmer (regardless of falling iguanas) but affects people all over the world.

International studies, for example, have shown that while the prevalence rate for SAD is only about 3 percent in Saudi Arabia (where the sun shines reliably for most of the year), it’s 19-21 percent in places like Alaska and Norway that experience long periods of reduced sunlight. In fact, one study showed that over 40 percent of people living in Alaska experience some form of the winter blues, even if they don’t reach full criteria for SAD (Drew and colleagues 2021).

SAD is a psychological diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, DSM-5—the bible of the........

© Psychology Today