{"id":105057,"date":"2025-03-10T20:32:41","date_gmt":"2025-03-11T01:32:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/?p=105057"},"modified":"2026-01-01T16:05:50","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T22:05:50","slug":"winter-blues-coping-with-seasonal-affective-disorder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/winter-blues-coping-with-seasonal-affective-disorder\/","title":{"rendered":"WATCH: Winter blues: Coping with seasonal affective disorder"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>By Anneliese Cornejo Garcia<br \/>\n<\/b><em>Medill Reports<\/em><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">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.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Seasonal affective disoder\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/1061467109?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write; encrypted-media\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><b>Transcript:\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>JACKIE LI: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Five percent.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>SEBASTIAN DASH:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Five percent.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>ANNIKA RAJ: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Five percent.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>JOAQUIN NOGUERA: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Five percent of the U.S. population suffers from seasonal depression.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>LAUREN NICHOLS: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It\u2019s a form of depression, basically. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">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.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>NOGUERA: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It definitely gets harder when it gets dark out early, when you walk out of class, and it\u2019s 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.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>NICHOLS: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">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\u2019t have a lot of daylight.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>LI: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I spent most of my time growing up in Singapore where we didn\u2019t really have many seasonal changes. And so, it didn\u2019t 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.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>NICHOLS:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> It is more commonly diagnosed in women, 4 out of 5 people that get diagnosed. It\u2019s also, we know that women are more likely to seek out support.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>RAJ:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I don\u2019t know. I feel like sometimes I\u2019m, like, \u201cYeah, l don\u2019t want to, like, leave my room.\u201d But it\u2019s crazy to think that there\u2019s actually people that get diagnosed &#8211; it\u2019s a very real thing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>NICHOLS:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> And sometimes, when I hear this thing of, \u201cI can\u2019t even get out of bed.\u201d The idea of going to talk to somebody for therapy, it\u2019s 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.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>NOGUERA:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I feel like there\u2019s good community here to help deal with it, and with friends like Pablo, I\u2019m able to get through it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Anneliese Cornejo Garcia is a video and broadcast media graduate student at Medill. You can connect with her on <\/span><\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/anneliese-cornejo-garcia-0ba795235\/\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">LinkedIn.<\/span><\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1005,"featured_media":105058,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,5542,5487],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-and-science","category-msj25","category-winter-2025"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>WATCH: Winter blues: Coping with seasonal affective disorder - Medill Reports Chicago<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/winter-blues-coping-with-seasonal-affective-disorder\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"WATCH: Winter blues: Coping with seasonal affective disorder - Medill Reports Chicago\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Anneliese Cornejo Garcia Medill Reports Chicago winters can be filled with fun indoor activities and warm seasonal foods. 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