Got that summertime sadness? You could have summer seasonal depression

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The summer season is marked by vacations, getaways, swimming and fun outdoor adventures.

And yet for some among us, summer is a bummer.

We’ve heard about people getting the winter blues, but some people suffer from seasonal depression in the summer, says Dr. Norman Rosenthal, a psychiatrist at Georgetown University School of Medicine and author of the book, “Defeating SAD: A Guide to Health and Happiness Through All Seasons.”

Back in 1984, Rosenthal was the first to describe and diagnose seasonal affective disorder, or SAD. He says he was inspired to study the connection between the seasons and depression after he moved to New York City from South Africa for his psychiatric residency and noticed that his mood was much lower in the winter.

“I came from South Africa, which is very sunny. I arrived in New York City and the winter, the darkness really got me, and I suffered through each winter of my psych residency,” Rosenthal says. “When I came to do research at the National Institute of Mental Health, I chose that as an area to study: the effects of light on mood, the effects of seasons.”

Rosenthal and his colleagues put a survey in the newspaper asking people if they suffered from winter depression. While many responded saying they felt more depressed in winter, one in 20 respondents said they suffered from the opposite problem: Summertime made them sad.

Both winter and summer versions of SAD are characterized by low mood and a lack of interest in things once enjoyed. But there are very important differences between the two, Rosenthal says.

“The winter folks are like hibernating bears. They're slowed down. They sleep too much, eat too much, gain weight, feel sluggish, unmotivated,” he says. “The summer type are energized, activated, irritable and at a greater risk for suicide because they're not sort of sitting around like the bear. They are agitated and an agitated depressed person, as most psychiatrists will tell you, he's not somebody you want to mess around with because that is a very dangerous state of mind.”

Why does summer depression come with a greater risk of suicide? 

“If you think of dysphoric movies, if you think of the Scandinavian dysphoria, they're reflecting the sadness of the short days. But a couple of my folks talked about feeling suicidal and just not having the energy, focus, organization to do anything about it, which was, in my mind, very fortunate.

“The summer folks, if you think of their dysphoria, it's more like those movies where there's a kind of frenetic energy that is edgy and people are looking for ways to kind of sedate themselves and are actually at greater risk of harming themselves one way or another than the winter types.”

Why can the bright sunlight make people feel more depressed? 

“Well, sometimes they'll be driving home and they'll feel the light coming at them and it's almost like a personal insult, like something that's piercing them in an unpleasant or really awful way.

“The agitation is the best way to describe it because if you're down and you're agitated, it's very dangerous.”

What can you do if you’re suffering from summer depression? 

“You try to fix what's causing the trouble, so you might keep your shades down. You might draw your curtains. You might keep your rooms dark, especially at the margins of the day, you know, the light that goes on and on and won't let you sleep. Likewise, if it's the heat that's agitating, you keep cool, turn the air conditioning up, take cold showers or baths.

“So I think it's the usual thing of fixing the things that are causing you trouble somehow to recognize that pattern and understand that inherent in the pattern is the cause of the problem and is the treatment of the problem.”

How effective are these nonmedical interventions for summer depression?

“As a psychiatrist, I like to use every tool at my disposal. I love to try and find nonmedical ways of treating people. They just feel better. They feel more authentic. They usually have fewer side effects.

“But if medicines are needed, I will not resist them, whether it's for myself or for somebody else. I think the goal is helping yourself feel good all year round. That's the goal. And as I say in my book, there are many, many ways to do that and medicines are certainly one of them. And there you want to involve a professional because the different medicines have different pros and cons, but I would definitely not exclude them if the other more simple or more nonmedical things aren't doing the job.”

How might climate change more broadly impact mental health? 

“I think that's such an important question. I have been vacationing these last couple of weeks in Greece. We thought if we got here at this time of the year, we would escape the worst of the summer and probably we have, but it's been tremendously hot. The Greeks that I've been talking to don't go out in the heat. They don't go out in the midday sun. They have their siesta. They hang in and then they go out when the sun goes down and that's in a way very sensible.

“I was saying all along, find out what's wrong and then correct it. And I was talking on an individual level, which is the one where we have the most control, but this applies to our home, the Earth. We need to find out what are we doing wrong and how do we fix it because that's where the key is going to be to helping us with this global warming.”

Samantha Raphelson produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Catherine Welch. Raphelson also adapted it for the web.