When May arrives, Lindsey Smith withdraws. She skips picnics, hikes, vacations and pool days. Sometimes she just sits on her couch in the air conditioning.
When people invite her out, she often declines. If she goes to an event, she wants to leave immediately. “I just call it ‘going dark.
’ In June, I just go dark. It is really difficult for me. I feel like I have to do so much more to maintain,” Smith, 30, an author in Pittsburgh, tells TODAY.
com. “I started saying ‘I hate summer,’ but I was struggling with in the summer.” Seasonal depression, otherwise known as (SAD), is a type of depression that is caused by changing seasons.
Most know about wintertime SAD, when people feel depressed during the dark, cold winter months. But there’s a smaller group of people who experience this when the days are warmer and longer. “It is a thing.
It is not as common as winter SAD,” Kathryn Roecklein, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, told TODAY. “We don’t have a lot of research on summer SAD.” Yet, there are several theories explaining why seasons influence depression.
In winter, not being exposed to enough sunlight and UV rays changes the body’s internal clock, the , and that causes some people to experience depression. This is well understood, Roecklein said. The mechanism behind summertime SAD is less understood, but likely still relates to how sun and UV light contribute to how people feel.
“Heat, sun and UV exposure lim.