How To Banish The Winter Blues

If you suffer from seasonal affective disorder—or if the darker, colder months just get you down—there are many ways to brighten your mood.

- Vanessa Milne

WHEN TED JABLONSKI was growing up in Winnipeg, he could often be found on winter days hanging out in the sun. “I would always sit at the top of the staircase by the window—it was my favourite place,” the 58-year old remembers. “And even on the most frigid days, I would insist on walking to school.”

As he grew older, what had started as a seemingly benign preference for sunlight took a darker turn. By the time he was an adult, Jablonski began to go into every winter with a sense of dread. “It was a visceral feeling of gloom,” he says. “I’d work longer hours in order to distract myself from my feelings; I just tried to hang on until it passed in the spring.”

Then, in the winter of 2002, Jablonski slid into a depression. He recognized then that he’d been struggling with seasonal affective disorder (SAD)—depression that occurs every year, most often in the darker months—for most of his life. Ironically, Jablonski, who is now a family doctor in Calgary, treated many people with the disorder before he accepted that he suffered from it too. “It took me a long time to admit that this was more than just hating winter.”

A lot of us go into hibernation mode every time the cold comes around, socializing less and feeling like we only have enough energy for binge watching TV shows. But for the 15 per cent of Canadians who suffer from SAD, it goes beyond that—they oversleep, overeat, and feel guilty, irritable and hopeless. The symptoms usually come on in the fall, peak in late January, and go away in the spring.