Imagine if you had depression and it was cold and gloomy.
Seasonal affective disorder is real.
I would also say that medications for depression are becoming even more common than when we declared the Prozac generation.
Some people now wear bipolar around like a badge of honor. The news piece actually makes a lot of sense and is properly framed with regards to the problems of depression and the nature of depressive episodes. Why it’s normal to be depressed sometimes, and the antidepressants are not really that good when you look at the unpublished studies and add them to the published ones.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/health/Canadians+growing+anti+depressants+problematic/9463613/story.html
It’s an interesting theory, certainly, but I would counter that it can’t be that strong an effect. Just speaking for myself anecdotally, I have never felt nervous, unsettled or anxious around sunset or evening twilight (unless I’m about to miss a serious deadline or something, of course — I speak as though all other things were equal). On the contrary, for me it’s one of the most relaxing events of the day, even if I am still at work when it happens.
Perhaps the learned psychological impact of knowing the working day is over/almost over counteracts the fear of nightime threats? *shrug* All I know is I love looking at these here stars, and I don’t care how hungry that jaguar is, she’s just going to have to wait until I get this (hobby) telescope pointed right….
Many Arctic/Antarctic explorers died of scurvy. The cure for that is simple. One of the first signs of scurvy is depression, and generally feeling of weakness.
I’m sure there are additional psychological effects, and plain, old emotional depression due to everyday stress, but SAD is in addition to those. It’s a physiological response similar to working in an environment that is always too hot or too cold. Not getting enough morning light everyday could be compared to never eating breakfast. It’s not going to kill you or anything, but you’re obviously not going to be working at your optimum efficiency if you’re constantly denying your body a physiological need.
Humans have an amazing ability to adapt to adversity but as a consequence we will get used to working in a diminished capacity and not realize we have a problem. Many people consider it normal to use multiple alarm clocks to wake up, drink five coffees before noon, and have trouble falling asleep before 01:00 AM. Two of the first symptoms of sleep deprivation are emotional sensitivity and reduced cognitive function. Light therapy, due to the improved sleep it provides, can’t do anything to make it suck less that you’re stuck at work till after sundown, but it can improve your ability to deal with it. The end result may be that it feels like it sucks less.
One other thing that works really well in combination with good workplace lighting is avoiding the sight of sunset and subsequent twilight until you’re done for the day. It is OK to know about it, but being exposed to it visually is very distracting and can easily be depressing to some people, especially those who are trying to accomplish something before it’s too late (like most of us, I suppose).
It’s sundown and you are not in your den yet? Horror. The end of the day is stressful for many animals and it is easy to believe it was stressful for humans until very recently. We are still programmed to respond to it with urgency.
A little more info on SAD and why light therapy works:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosensitive_ganglion_cell
http://www.ifc.unam.mx/curso_ritmos/capitulo12/Berson1.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lux
“Most work suggests that the peak spectral sensitivity of the receptor is between 460 and 484 nm.” That’s just about the color of a bright blue sky. The nerve paths of these cells can be traced to the
It makes sense that human beings are biologically affected by day length cycles. The highest concentration of these ganglions is on the bottom of the retina where the image of the sky would strike it. Modern living often has people staying inside until late afternoon. Without the external cue that it is time to be awake, they feel groggy and tired all day. Their first exposure to day light is around 4-5 PM. Whatever time you first spend in bright light (like a long drive home) your body decides is morning. Release of sleep hormones like melatonin doesn’t occur until about 16 hours later making sleep difficult. Most of the symptoms of SAD are just symptoms of sleep disruption or deprivation. I had this problem while working nights in Sicily. I literally went 6 months without seeing the sun. It’s like being permanently stuck in the first 30 minutes of waking up after a bad night’s sleep. I wouldn’t confuse it with clinical depression though. It’s more like a sleep disorder.
The good news is that there’s nothing special about therapy lights except brightness. The typical, anemic lighting of an office building is barely as bright as sunrise. It’s about 100th what someone would consider full daylight. I once used a $20 halogen shop light which seemed to work in my personal experiment. Anything claiming you need some specialized $500 prescription light fixture is a scam.
Maybe if the planet heats up and eliminates cold. 😉 We will no longer need anti-depressants and it will stop the senseless mass shootings.
The photosensitive ganglion cells at the bottom of the retina aren’t sensitive to UV. They are sensitive to blue light similar to the color of a bright day-time sky. Any sufficiently bright light that includes this blue spectrum is effective. The exposure to light triggers the reabsorption of melatonin. Release of melatonin occurs about 16 hours later when it’s time to get ready for bed. John Ott was on the right track, but a lot has been discovered since his time.
I wonder if I can write off my trip to St. Thomas as a medical treatment for SAD?
There are worse problems in the South. The heat is so depressing one can’t even stay awake during the day.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sleeping_man_in_Ouagadougou.jpg
Just move South or, better yet, grow up.
You be right Mr. T the light treatment must be the right kind of light 30 minutes, usually recommended in the am. Melatonin does have a positive effect, but light treatment may have other effects too.
Damn right. I long for summer.
The late John Nash Ott, the famous photographer who developed time lapse photography (remember the dancing flowers on Disney’s “Wonderful World of Color”?) had it figured out. The cure is direct exposure of the human eyes to long-wave UV light for 30 minutes or more a day, starting at the same time every day. He believed the UV stimulated the epithelial cells of the retina to produce melatonin that affected the brain via the optic nerve. Regardless of his hypothesis, his treatment works for me. It also corrects jet lag.
The details are in his book “Health and Light”.
Try living east of one of the Great Lakes. Kalamazoo, MI, has about 180 days of sunshine, very few of them in the winter. They were talking about depression from short days, mostly overcast and dark during the winter 30 years ago. You really appreciated the sunny three months of bad sledding.
Such depressions are easily treated with good lighting, properly timed.
No, I don’t mean that puny bedroom light with a shade and a dimmer. The luminous flux It needs to deliver to the eye must be of the same order of magnitude as normal daylight, and same colour, with lots of short-wave light.
If it is an incandescent bulb, it needs to be in the kW range. Like a floodlight.
An Apple laptop screen lit at a couple notches short of full brightness does a good job, too.
I figure, it is a cheaper treatment, with no side-effects.