This article contains discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255, Crisis & Suicide Intervention Hotline at 317-251-7575, text IN to 741741 or CSIS to 839863, or find resources from Indiana Suicide Prevention.
INDIANAPOLIS — The winter blues could be even bluer this year for millions of Americans as the darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic collide with seasonal depression.
David Berman, executive director of the Indiana Suicide Prevention Network, said Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), the stress of the holidays and anxieties about the pandemic are coming together all at once.
"We've all hit the wall, and it's just a perfect alignment of there's been enough time with social distancing and the pandemic that I think we're all just exhausted," Berman said. "It's intersecting with winter and it's intersecting with the holidays."
In a typical, non-pandemic year, about 5% of the U.S. population experiences SAD, which is linked to a biochemical imbalance in the brain due to shorter daylight hours and less sunlight in the winter, according to the American Psychiatric Association. Women are diagnosed with SAD four times as often than men.
"My biggest worry is that we're all in a place right now where we're experiencing exhaustion and we're experiencing the effects of the pandemic that it's hard to be supportive of those that are around us that are experiencing the holiday blues or that are experiencing the effects of the holidays on their existing mental health disorder or that have it exacerbated by the holidays," Berman said.
The mental health effects of the pandemic were already a crisis before the seasons changed. Berman, who also serves as vice president of harm reduction and crisis stabilization programs for Mental Health America of Indiana, said self-screenings for depression, bipolar disorder or anxiety between April-November 2020 on the organization's website increased by 480% compared to the same time period in 2019.
"That may be one of the most concerning stats that I'm looking at," Berman said. "We're really focused on the mortality data when it comes to suicide. I feel like we're too focused on that when we should be more focused on these folks here who are at significant risk. It's scary. If you sit there and you look at it and you kind of put it in the language of these are individuals who are at high-risk for dying by suicide and the numbers are just increasing every single month as a result of the pandemic."
Berman added that the majority of people submitting self-screenings are between the ages of 11-24, many of whom have spent several months away from their friends while learning outside the classroom and missing extracurricular activities.
"When you look at the support system the kids have that involved school activities, whether it's sports or extracurriculars or clubs or whatever, being around their friends, I absolutely think that a lot of it has to do with that," he said. "A lot of these things are just taken away. I mean, they're gone in their lives, and they were their support systems, they were their outlets, and they're struggling."
Another alarming statistic is the number of Hoosiers who have died from drug overdoses in 2020. Fatal drug overdoses, which decreased as recently as 2018 following six years of increases, went up by 20.6% in the second quarter of this year compared to the first quarter, according to the Indiana State Department of Health.
So what can we do to get through the winter, especially since the calendar changing to 2021 won't magically fix the situation?
- If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255, Crisis & Suicide Intervention Hotline at 317-251-7575 or utilize other resources listed at the top of this article.
- Therapies for Seasonal Affective Disorder include light therapy, psychotherapy, antidepressant medications and Vitamin D, according to the National Institutes of Health. Consult your doctor for more information on what works best for you.
- If you simply feel the need to scream, Iceland's "Let It Out" campaign can help. Go online to record a scream that will be released "in Iceland's beautiful, wide-open spaces."
- Keep and adapt your holiday traditions, even if they are different and from a distance this year. "Try and maintain the things that are important to you during the holidays," Berman said. "For those individuals that have family members or friends that they know are typically really affected by the holidays and with depression and anxiety, make sure you continue to reach out to them, even moreso than in the past. So much to this is there's no new tricks."
Spring will come and the pandemic will someday end, but, for now, we need to take care of ourselves and each other.
