Seasonal Depression

Regular readers of this column (I know there is at least one of you out there) might have noticed a preoccupation with Fall over the last four installments, and with good reason. Besides being my favorite time of year, what with all of the Halloween goblins we recently said goodbye to for another year and the close proximity of an overabundance of turkey, stuffing, a good beer and a football game, Fall has most other season’s beat before the competition even begins.

Recently however, I found myself face to face with a revelation that hits me each year around this time.

I am going to miss the Sun.

The Sun, that great ball in the sky that has kept life on this planet going long before man and for a long time to come. The Sun has so many simple and complex connections to man and their history, it is almost as if the two were made for each other.

However, each Fall the time the Sun spends warming or lives and our Earth begins to be reduced, till the sun feels more like an acquaintance then a friend, someone who might drop round for dinner but might not stay for a drink afterward.

It makes me feel tired, less focused and almost kind of sad, as if something were lost and just could not be found. The feeling deepens a bit after Christmas, when after all the holiday fanfare the rest of Winter is laid out before us in one uninteresting lump, leaving us begging for Spring.

Amazingly, although my symptoms are the mild sort that can be pushed away by a good Basketball match up or an exciting writing project, this is a real condition, called Seasonal Affective Disorder.

The disorder can take place at any time of year but the most common is during the Fall and Winter, when the number of daylight hours starts to lessen.

Symptoms include loss of energy, fatigue, a gain or reduction in weight and feelings of general depression.

This is connecting in a clinical manner the feelings and intuitions of many philosophers and psychological figures. The idea that the Sun is somehow connected to our happiness and virtue is an old one.

Sunlight in healthy doses has been shown to increase happiness and lessen depression, not surprising when you think of the psychological impact of light vs dark.

It should be noted however that the body has a natural tendency to be lazier in the Winter, even if the climate is not exactly hibernation or snowman weather. This completely normal behavior has been ingrained into our bodies yearly cycles for generations.

This has at times’ however, led people (like me, how do you think I started reading all this) to falsely think they may have a bigger issue, when it is just a normal reaction everyone can have from time to time.

The subject was reinforced when another of Dolphin Talk’s stable of writers confided that she too was feeling a bit down about less daylight each day, igniting my interest. It was fascinating for me to think that there could be many people who were affected by this shift in daylight hours, especially during those first few transitional weeks when we start to really feel the changes.

Even then we have it better then others to our far north and North-East, where daylight has already been lost to the wind and cold, making me shiver in my warm boots and should make you glad you are lucky enough to have Gulf Winters.

But even if the temperatures are a bit warmer and there is about as much chance for snow as there is a chance for Godzilla to rise from one of the bays, the reduced sun time has its effect here as well.

Has anyone else been missing the extended hours of sunlight we had in the Summer months?