A very interesting question ~ personally, I know I tend to have more energy during warmer/sunnier weather, but that's more physical than mental ~ I've got to think about the emotional/mental aspect ~ there is a "live link" to the study in the original, but for some reason the coding to make it "live" here isn't taking ~ Sooz

Sunday, Apr 21, 2013 10:00 AM CDT
Is mental health seasonal?
New Google-based research suggests that we're happier -- and saner -- in the summer months.
By Kevin Charles Redmon

This piece originally appeared on Pacific Standard.

Spring has sprung, at least for most of us, which means sundresses, seersucker and boozy croquet parties on the front lawn. Goodbye happy lamp, hello mimosa.

But it’s not just champagne that’s lifting our spirits and banishing the wintertime blues. According to Google (and a team of researchers from the University of Southern California, Harvard and Johns Hopkins) mental illnesses — such as obsessive compulsive disorder, depression and anorexia — are far more seasonal than we think.

The epidemiologists, led by John Ayers, combed through every Google search performed in the United States and Australia between 2006 and 2010, looking for queries like “symptoms of” and “medications for” OCD, anxiety, ADHD, bipolar, depression, anorexia, bulimia and schizophrenia.

The Internet, the authors note in a study forthcoming in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine (PDF), is “the world’s most relied-on health resource. Because of mental health’s complexity, stigma, and obstacles to care, patients are likely to investigate their problems online.” At the same time, tracking a population’s longterm mental health indicators is difficult for epidemiologists; phone surveys are often unreliable — would you want to discuss the voices in your head with a complete stranger? — and cost prohibitive. Google queries, on the other hand, are nakedly honest and free to collect.

“This is ‘Moneyball’ for mental health,” Ayers told me. “Big data and hypotheses-free investigations will allow for an unprecedented growth of knowledge across disciplines, especially mental health.”

If, as the researchers suspected, mental illness has a seasonal component, monthly dips and peaks in American self-help searches should be inverted from Australian ones, where winter arrives in March and lasts through September.

Indeed, that’s just what they found. Overall, American mental illness queries rose 14 percent in January while Australia’s 11 percent uptick came six months later (in July).

Upon closer inspection, certain disorders appeared to be particularly season-dependent. Queries involving “anorexia” and “bulimia,” for instance, were 37 percent higher in winter than in summer; schizophrenia-related searches took an equal jump, while ADHD searches climbed 31 percent. “Anxiety,” on the other hand, only appeared slightly more frequently in colder months than in warmer ones.

“We were very surprised to find that this seasonal pattern was replicated across a number of disease categories,” Ayers said. “For example, we saw strong seasonal patterns for schizophrenia, a disease for which symptom severity had not been associated with seasonal patterns, no doubt in part due to the challenges of performing field surveys of individuals with psychotic symptoms.”

The researchers propose several mechanisms that might make mental illness more seasonal than previously thought.

Daylight, certainly, has an impact on our circadian rhythm and has long been implicated in wintertime affective disorders. Vitamin D deficiency, too, may play a part, as a lack of sunshine decreases the body’s ability to absorb the nutrient. Summer, meanwhile, brings an increase in omega-3 consumption — thought by some physicians to promote mental wellness — as well as an obvious social benefit: long, warm evenings to go for jogs, play in the garden and share a beer with the neighbors.

“There is a lot more we need to learn about mental health and seasonality,” Ayers said. “For instance, is there a universal mechanism that impacts our mental health? We don’t know, but our data suggest looking is an excellent idea.”

Google can’t answer such questions, of course — even if it appears to know us better than we know ourselves. The “why” of mental illness, being a uniquely human condition, is a human one to solve.

http://www.salon.com/2013/04/21/study_depression_and_anxiety_may_be_more_seasonal_than_we_think_partner/

"Winter blues" are definitely real and caused by a lack of daylight.

I always feel better when it's sunny, whether it's -30C or +25C (Beyond that, it's too hot for me and I'm miserable!)

Would you settle for -35C?

lol oskar. Yep! I can ALWAYS add layers. When it's hot, I can only take off so many clothes before I'm arrested.

Topless is perfectly legal.
You're in Canada now.

LOL oskar! I wouldn't want to frighten little children.

My actual point is that once you shed all of your clothing, you're done. You can't get any more naked and will still be hot if it's 30+. We have a discussion every damn summer. "We should buy an a/c". "Yeah, but we should wait and buy one in the fall when they are on sale" "Ok, agreed"

By the time fall arrives, we think "We made it through the summer and it wasn't that bad"

It happens every year. Consequently, we don't buy one.

I've talked to dozens of people who say the same thing. ROFL!

Another factor is seasonal food. Some researchers have linked eating seasonal foods with better resistance to seasonal illness such as colds and flu. Thinking and feeling are controlled by biology. Even though we like to think we have some mental control over what we think and feel, science demonstrates that your thoughts and feelings are biological processes- the firing of neurotransmitters and other such processes. Kind of makes you feel warm and fuzzy, huh?

Interesting queen. With all the imports and hot house gardens, most foods aren't seasonal any longer. I can get most fruits or veggies year round. Granted, they aren't nearly as tasty as when in season and local, but they aren't bad either.

World of difference between "store bought" tomato and home grown...but if you set those little tomatos that come on a vine in a sunny window they turn out almost like home grown...

Just because you can get it year round, doesn't change whether or not it is "seasonal". The food that grows where you live, in theory, helps combat the perils that lurk where you live. Like the oyster theory- you can't eat oysters in a month that doesn't have an R in it. That's because it is most likley that oysters are harboing microorganisms that are harmful to you during the warm months.

I know my moods go up and down with the seasons, but I've never been sure how much of that is the seasons and how much is the ebb and flow of my work load with the school year.

I love my job, but that doesn't change the fact that the last week of June is a very happy time in my life!



if anyone needs me in July, i'll be out camping in the bush somewhere. Feel free to leave a message with the first moose you see.