Dr. Kelly Rowan

Temperature does play a smaller contribution.

People who have seasonal depression feel more depressed on cold days, but really what's carrying the day overall is day length, is the strongest thing in the environment that predicts when the symptoms begin in any given year and how bad they are on any particular day.

Women seem to be more affected than men.

And this is true of depression in general.

There's a two-to-one gender difference in depression to depressed women for every depressed man.

That seems to be the case in seasonal depression as well.

Living at a high latitude where on the winter solstice, the days are even shorter.

Like here where I live, Burlington, Vermont, on the winter solstice, we have just over eight hours of daylight to work with.

So people...

living here at my latitude, are more likely to be affected than folks who are living in southern Florida, for example.

Having a family history of depression, not necessarily seasonal depression, but depression runs in families.

We don't know exactly what is inherited, but there is assumed to be some genetic component that confers increased risk for depression.

Yeah, the research on that shows that for people that really have seasonal affective disorder, the clinical depression in the winter months, that January and February...

are the months that are the worst in terms of the depression symptoms at their peak.

Now they start much earlier than that, very commonly around the time change.

When we move our clocks back in the fall is a big trigger for a lot of people that begins the cascade of the symptoms, but they tend to be at their peak

January, February, even though you're right, the winter solstice happens on December 21st.

A lot of people are able to make it through December because of the holidays are somewhat invigorating for people, all the social activities, feeling like they can kind of make it through then.

But then after the new year, what's left?

We've got, you know, a good three months of winter left to deal with.