Seasonal Depression

Nate Herold

10/12/2024

Every year around this time, the leaves start to change and the temperature cools down. Summer slowly slides away with a brief fall and stick season around the corner. Everybody is going back to work, school, or whatever else they find themselves doing in the fall. Homework starts to pile up and tests and quizzes are beginning. This is a lot of change to handle at once. It’s overwhelming and stressful. You find your weekends booked up and little to no freetime. You might start getting annoyed at little things and losing that motivation you had in summertime. Not just for school work, but for everything. Life. This is the start of seasonal depression. I remember last year this exact same situation happening to me. I didn’t really stop to think that maybe the warmer weather and leaves on the trees could be affecting my everyday mood. I thought the term “seasonal depression” wasn’t real and just an excuse. I was wrong. Seasonal Depression (SAD), is a depression that occurs during certain seasons, for me this is late fall-winter. Some symptoms could be changes in sleep, decreased energy, feeling hopeless, etc.
SAD is very common with more than 3 million cases per year. Chances are you probably know somebody with it. There are, however, ways to prevent this. Eating healthy, getting as much natural sunlight as possibly, frequent exercise. These are all ways to prevent SAD during this time of year. Even though the leaves are gone and it’s quite cold, there are preventions to make this winter not so SAD (;