Scrambled Signals

Climate Change is doing more than making the weather weird, It’s making the once reliable Seasonal Affective Disorder unreliable. 

When October rolls around, most people are focused on the mainstays of fall: Halloween, autumn leaves, pumpkin patches, cozy nights, and colder weather.  Gracie Lou Lenz has other concerns. For her, fall comes with consistent spiraling, endless apathy, and sleepless nights. Her only desire: to give up. 

Lenz has Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), a recurring mood change that normally takes place at a reliable time each year. For Lenz, diagnosed with the disease in 2019, her junior year in high school, that time has always been the fall. Due to the effects of climate change, though, that’s becoming less and less reliable. 

“My parents said that I acted super different in the fall and winter [compared to the spring and summer] and seemed just, like, kind of a different person,” Lenz says. 

With her parent’s support, Lenz started seeing a therapist, where it suddenly clicked. Lenz had an explanation for why it seems impossible to get out of bed and why life becomes so much more challenging every year when September rolls around. 

Since the diagnosis, Lenz has tried to prepare herself for the seasonal change. 

“The biggest thing is just mentally preparing for it, just kind of being like, okay, September is coming,” Lenz says. “I try to focus on the things that I’m excited about in those months.”

Dr. Craig Sawchuk, a clinical psychologist from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesotan, explains the things people can do while feeling the impacts of SAD. One of his recommendations is to use a light box therapy, which simulates natural sunlight. Individuals can use these leading up to the time of year when their mood reliably changes. 

Although Lenz has tried this method of treatment, she says the biggest things that help her are talk therapy and focusing on the positive things. 

In recent years, unpredictable seasons have made the effects of SAD less predictable for Lenz, who lives in a suburb of Chicago, Illinois. 

“In November, we were having 80-degree days and it was like, ‘Oh, okay, I can kind of pretend that it’s summer or whatever until it gets dark early.’” 

Lenz isn’t the only one noticing these differences. 

In southeast Minnesota, the snow was minimal throughout the winter. Sawchuk says that it’s a low point for those coming in for seasonal depression because this past winter has been anything but normal. 

“Not having much of any snow on the ground, the temperatures actually being pleasant and not so cold [allows individuals to be] able to maintain a lot of these healthier rhythms and these more social rhythms,” Sawchuk says.

Although the majority of people do not experience the negative impacts of SAD during warmer months, Sawchuk says this is the perfect time to go to a therapist. Sawchuk urges people with SAD to talk with a doctor about what can be done when you start to feel the negative impacts before you are feeling them.

Although Sawchuk sees many positives in the overwhelming negatives of climate change, these changes and their unpredictability aren’t all sunshine. 

As April arrived, Lenz anticipated the mood-boosting effects of spring’s warm weather. However, the unpredictability of the weather only causes more distress. What used to be a hard and definite switch between seasons and moods is now a murky mix with unclear boundaries. 

“It is kind of weird… the weather here is shifting,” Lenz says. “The seasons aren’t what they used to be.”

In late March of this year, Lenz experienced summertime weather. This means long walks with her dogs and playing outside for hours with the children she cares for at her job. The overnight switch to a snowstorm, which was not what Lenz had mentally prepared for, took a toll on her well-being. 

“We had snow in the beginning of April,” Lenz says. “And the snow is a big thing for me because it kind of traps me in and I can’t go out and do as much. That makes it significantly more difficult for me.” 

With the snow melting for what will hopefully be the last time this spring, Lenz is looking forward to the upcoming season. Despite the uncertainty of unpredictable weather keeping her on her toes, Lenz is looking forward to pure happiness, the warm weather, the beach days, the hours of reading in the grass, and everything else that makes a Midwest summer worth the turmoil of a Midwest winter.