Source: Vinay Ramakrishnan, The Daily Barometer

A new study being published in the December 2013 issue of the Journal of Affective Disorders found that the impacts of seasonal affective disorder are not as severe as commonly thought.

David Kerr, assistant professor of psychology at Oregon State, was the leader of the study, which analyzed two previous studies of participants’ historic depressive symptoms, collected during a 20-year period.

“There was no association with recent sunlight levels or any other weather conditions,” Kerr said. “The findings suggest the general population is not showing sensitivity to changes in the weather.”

While Kerr notes that SAD exists and that depression is a serious public health problem, he suggests that many of us may need to look for other reasons why depression is occurring.

“It’s not helpful for us to have this common belief that the seasons profoundly affect most of us,” Kerr said.

According to the study itself, the sample consisted of 206 fourth-grade boys recruited in the mid-1980s in Oregon, and 556 seventh- or ninth-grade boys and girls recruited in Iowa in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

A self-report questionnaire measured participants’ emotions.

Students were prompted about how frequently they experienced certain depressive systems. Those symptoms were then measured against the weather, time of year and place of residence.

“We figured out the weather based on the time of year and where they were living,” Kerr said.

Kerr said there might be a weak correlation between the seasons and depressive symptoms, but students should still take depressive symptoms seriously.

Jeff Shaman, assistant professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University and a co-author of the study, was rather surprised by the results.

“It was somewhat of a conundrum,” said Shaman, a former OSU faculty member. “From what we thought previously, there was thought to be a significant seasonal variation in depressive symptoms. We didn’t find that.”

This particular study took a different approach in comparison to previous studies on the subject. Rather than asking participants if they experienced depressive systems as the seasons changed, the study focused on whether depressive systems existed, and then compared it to the season and time of year.

“It occurred to me that I had some data that could shed some unique light on this issue,” Kerr said. “That’s what inspired and excited me about it.”

Vinay Ramakrishnan

News reporter

managing@dailybarometer.com

PRP
Latest posts by PRP (see all)