Wellness Wednesday: The summer blues… SAD in the sunshine season
SADness can happen at any time of year
Share widely:
“5 tips for beating summer depression” from Dr. Reba Peoples MD.
3 links related to seasonal affective disorder in SHC:
- Don’t wait for winter blues to strike: Our Pinterest board shines light on SAD (Oct 12, 2017)
- What is light therapy and how can light actually help improve sleep? (Feb 23, 2015)
- Are insomnia and winter depression linked? (Nov 4, 2014)
Call our Sleep Health Hotline
I have suffered with Summer SAD all my life, and I’m over 60 now. While I live in the NE, even the summers here are mostly intolerable. The heat, humidity, and too intense sunlight force me indoors while nearly everyone else is outdoors.
It seems society easily accepts those who have wintertime SAD, but rejects those who have the summertime variant. All too often people sincerely say I must be crazy to complain about the summer weather, or they try to convince me I’m wrong.
Enough! Thousands of people suffer from Summer SAD. It’s real, it’s debilitating, and about all we can do to cope is stay inside, hug a 2-liter bottle filled th frozen water, and pray for a cloudy, rainy day to give us a respite.
Or wait until the cool, dark days of winter when we are happy, energetic, and in better health – both physical and mental.
Extremes from either side of the climate spectrum are hard to live with. I can’t stand super muggy hot summer days either, and when I do go to sunny climates for vacation I’m always in the shade and live in my sunglasses. Where I live, it’s cool but overcast all winter and that bright white glare means I am wearing my sunglasses then as well. Bright light, for me, is a migraine in the making!
I agree, people need to stop judging others for their experiences with weather and climate. Everyone is different and so is their tolerance to extremes.
The curator