By Anneliese Cornejo Garcia
Medill Reports
Chicago winters can be filled with fun indoor activities and warm seasonal foods. But for some, shorter days and sub-zero temperatures entails low energy and persistent sadness. Many doctors call it seasonal affective disorder, a mental health condition affecting millions of 20 to 30-year-olds. The earlier the sun goes down, the number of people struggling to turn over a new leaf during colder months each year goes up.
Transcript:
JACKIE LI: Five percent.
SEBASTIAN DASH: Five percent.
ANNIKA RAJ: Five percent.
JOAQUIN NOGUERA: Five percent of the U.S. population suffers from seasonal depression.
LAUREN NICHOLS: It’s a form of depression, basically. Starting in the fall, and then as people move through winter, their symptoms actually develop during that particular time period. Then, they start to go away when they move into the spring and summer.
NOGUERA: It definitely gets harder when it gets dark out early, when you walk out of class, and it’s already dark. And the weather can make it difficult. I remember just last Tuesday, I think it was, when it was below zero degrees Fahrenheit. It was hard to even leave the room.
NICHOLS: Living in Chicago, in particular, we live in a part of the country that you see a lot of people with this pattern because we don’t have a lot of daylight.
LI: I spent most of my time growing up in Singapore where we didn’t really have many seasonal changes. And so, it didn’t really actually start to hit me that this is a real problem that a lot of teenagers and a lot of people went through until I came to the U.S.
NICHOLS: It is more commonly diagnosed in women, 4 out of 5 people that get diagnosed. It’s also, we know that women are more likely to seek out support.
RAJ: I don’t know. I feel like sometimes I’m, like, “Yeah, l don’t want to, like, leave my room.” But it’s crazy to think that there’s actually people that get diagnosed – it’s a very real thing.
NICHOLS: And sometimes, when I hear this thing of, “I can’t even get out of bed.” The idea of going to talk to somebody for therapy, it’s a step way down the road sometimes. Take a walk, right? Try to do a little bit of movement. Pay attention to things like nutrition, are you eating enough meals? You know, talking to someone.
NOGUERA: I feel like there’s good community here to help deal with it, and with friends like Pablo, I’m able to get through it.
Anneliese Cornejo Garcia is a video and broadcast media graduate student at Medill. You can connect with her on LinkedIn.
