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Don’t be SAD

by Natalia Antonova at 28/09/2012

The Moscow News

For Yulia Ivanova, the worst thing about seasonal depression was other people’s insistence that it didn’t exist.

“They called me ‘lazy,’ they called me a ‘liar,’ and they said that people like me are a drain on society,” she told The Moscow News.

Ivanova used to write a blog about depression, with a specific focus on seasonal depression – a condition she said she has suffered from in some way or another for as long as she remembers. Following a harassment campaign against her by a group of trolls, Ivanova took her blog down.

“I’m glad I wrote it all under a pseudonym,” she said. “People can get surprisingly vindictive when they get into disagreements on the Internet – especially when these disagreements concern [one’s] health and lifestyle choices.”

Seasonal affective disorder, or SAD, tends to affect some people during the darker, colder months – although instances of SAD cropping up in the spring or summer are not unheard of. And while for some sufferers, keeping SAD under control is relatively easy, others see their work performance and personal relationships suffer.

In the colder months, SAD sufferers experience feelings of lethargy, weight gain, changes in appetite and, above all else, persistent feelings of depression and gloom. And in modern Russia, where awareness of how to cope with psychological problems is quickly gaining ground among the general populace, sufferers have noted that the famously grim Russian winter does play a big role in how they feel.

“When I was studying abroad in warmer countries, it was easier to deal with feelings of sadness and depression in the fall and winter,” Ivanova said. “Of course, there’s still nothing like enjoying the snow on a sunny winter day somewhere in a Moscow park – but the marked lack of sunlight in the European part of Russia does make a difference, I think.”

Ivanova believes that a lack of information about SAD leads to disbelief and denial of symptoms, even among sufferers themselves. “Seasonal depression is not the same as getting occasionally irritated about ice and snow on the roads, or about having to stuff yourself in a warm parka every time you go outside,” she said. “It’s a persistent condition – and I know for a fact that it runs in my family, though my relatives remain in denial.”

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