Arthur C. Brooks noticed colleagues getting sloppy and depressed in February and traced it to Seasonal Affective Disorder. About 9% of Americans have SAD, which worsens when there's less sunlight. More sun exposure during winter can help.
when it comes to the sun exposure, what I found was that people became unproductive in February when I was co-authoring an academic journal article. They wouldn't be getting their drafts in on time. Their work would be notably sloppier. They would be kind of looking disheveled and bummed out. They wouldn't shave. And I'm like, what's wrong with you? And the answer is that they were depressed. Why? Because a non-trivial number of them had a pathology, had a disorder called SAD, seasonal affective disorder. Isn't that a clever acronym? SAD. And that's actually what we find in good academic studies. There's one from the actual National Institute of Mental Health from 2023 called Seasonal Affective Disorder in the United States. And it found that about 9% of Americans have this seasonal affective disorder, which makes them more exposed to mood disorders when they haven't seen the sun in a long time. And they actually get more benefit from seeing sunshine, especially during winter months. So 9%, that's, that's a lot. That's not as many as people who actually like to see the sun and actually get a mood boost from it. But these are people who get especially depressed during long periods. So if you think you have it, then you need to take care of that.
