Winter blues are way too common

Feeling low

“Thus wears the month along, in checker’d moods,
Sunshine and shadows, tempests loud, and calms;
One hour dies silent o'er the sleepy woods,
The next wakes loud with unexpected storms...”

Willian Cullen Byrant

The poem November by Byrant vividly defines the melancholy many face when there is a change in season. But clinically, this melancholic mood comes under the umbrella of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) which colloquially is known as “winter blues,” winter depression or summer depression or “summertime sadness”. As the capital is at the threshold of a chilling winter ahead, experts say unknowingly many people become victims of this seasonal mood disorder.

 “Infrequent low moods in which one doesn’t experience vast behavioural changes may be termed as blues,” says Dr Sanjana Saraf, consultant clinical psychologist, Max Hospital, Gurgaon. “People do not recognise SAD which comes under ‘clinical depression’. These mood swings often go unrecognised till spring.”

Gazal Malik 25, a student, too goes through a bout of low mood during winter. “I feel these blues every winter. Sometimes I feel morose as summer ends. Not because I feel I am sinking into ‘depression’ per say. But I hate uncoordinated mood swings. I know it will happen and I know nothing can be done about it.”

Dr Shwetank Bansal M D (Psychiatry) from Betterme Services says, “Evolutionarily speaking, winter blues are hard wired into many organisms, in the form of hibernation, which manifests as a reduction in the body’s metabolic rate. This causes temporary slowing down of the activity of various organ systems during winter
when food supply and natural sources of nutrition are limited.”

He explains that blues can manifest in a variety of ways, with a feeling of lethargy and general weariness among the most common complaint. Apart from this, people may also experience intermittent, short-lived or day-long episodes of unexplained mood swings, sadness, or tearfulness. A frequent accompaniment is craving for food containing high quantities of carbohydrates and fats (from here comes winter weight gain).

These blues don’t necessarily warrant clinical attention in all the cases, since in most people, they tend to lie on a subclinical part of the mood spectrum.

Dr Bansal says, “The best way to beat the blues is to gain adequate exposure to sunlight. It tends to act at the very root of the problem and facilitate the generation of adequate amounts of serotonin in the brain.”

 “Exercise is often therapeutic, since it releases endorphins (the body’s natural feel-good chemicals) and wards off depression. Laughing more, placing oneself in the company that one enjoys, having food that one likes, and having sex are other means to raise your endorphin levels and keep the blues at bay.”

Saraf also points out that if “one experiences constant low mood and finds it difficult to cope with the blues, he or she should seek  help from a psychiatrist.”

There are a few people who are known for channelising their depression into creative outputs. Famed author JK Rowling being a notable example mentions experiencing severe depression. She credits Harry Potter series as a creative result of that. But not everyone is good enough at washing away blues. Winter blues too have the tendency to bring down productivity and can play with one’s feeling of self worth.

In fact, at times, people have been driven to suicide because their blues progressed to a precipitous decline in their mental well-being.