As November plods along, the dark nights have truly set in and the temperatures have dropped. Many of us won’t see much sunlight during the working week, and portions of the commute involve trudging through the rain. It’s not hard to see why this can have a big impact on our mental health!
We can understand the factors that impact our wellbeing using the biopsychosocial model. This model explains that there are three broad types of factor that affect how we feel:
- Biological factors. These factors include sleep, diet, exercise, health and genetics.
- Psychological factors. This includes your previous experiences, the meaning you attribute to winter (e.g. winter is cold and horrible vs winter is cozy), and stress.
- Social factors. These factors refer to your environment in the broad sense of the word – your social environment, workplace, finances, and your physical environment.
Winter can impact us across all three of these levels. Fewer daylight hours can impact sleep as we depend on blue light in the mornings to wake us up. It can also be harder to engage in consistent exercise when it’s cold, dark and often rainy outside. Stress levels can increase due to increased costs associated with colder weather. There are also some neurobiological differences that increase the risk of feeling low in the winter, such as problems with serotonin regulation and overproduction of melatonin that affect some.
For some people, these changes are particularly impactful on their mood. Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is a diagnosis given to people who experience depression that fluctuates with the seasons. SAD affects up to 20% of people with Major Depressive Disorder, and up to 3% of the general population. SAD is more common in people who live further away from the equator and therefore experience a greater difference in daylight between summer and winter.
What can you do to minimise the impact of shorter days on your wellbeing? Here are some tips:
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- Our sleep rhythms are guided by exposure to blue light with blue light meaning time to wake up. Therefore, it can help to avoid blue light in screens for an hour before bed. If stopping screen time altogether is unrealistic, some phones have ‘night modes’ that filter out blue light.
- Following the same idea, introducing a source of blue light to your morning routine can help you overcome the lethargy dark mornings can cause. For example, sunrise alarm clocks slowly mimic a sunrise in your bedroom at a time set by you, allowing you to wake up in a gently lit room.
- If your commute is dark it can be helpful to get some sunlight during the day if you’re able. Taking a short walk at lunchtime can help with this.
- If accessing sunlight is nearly impossible for you, you could consider taking Vitamin D supplements. Vitamin D is needed for healthy bones and immune system, and is generated in the body through exposure to sunlight. Speak to your GP for guidance on whether taking a supplement could help you.
- Darker evenings can stop us from doing the things we enjoy, which in turn can make our mood worse. Try to keep doing the things you enjoy, even if this means moving them inside, changing them, or trying something new.
- Planning positive events for the future can help us activate neural networks that help us feel good. Just thinking about something triggers a response similar to it actually happening – anyone who is scared of spiders and has thought about finding a group of them in your bedroom will know this! Planning for when the days start to get longer can take advantage of this effect, even if the plans are only small.
- Remember that the short days aren’t forever!
If you’ve been feeling persistently low, this has been causing you distress or impacting your ability to do the things you need to do, or you think you might have SAD, you might need psychological support. Speak to your GP or contact us on enquiries@belgraviapsychologypractice.com to find out how we could help.