Cheer up, it’s worse elsewhere

As Alaska starts down the tunnel toward the long season of the SAD dark, there comes this good news:

Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is worse in 13 other states, or so claims the “Legacy Healing Center.”

When hours of sunlight, temperatures and rainfall are taken into account along with reports of fatigue and sleep disturbances, the Florida-based drug and alcohol treatment center with facilities spread coast-to-coast across the country fingers West Virginia as the worst state for “seasonal depression.”

Alaska is down at number 14 despite a claimed 358 hours of “average fall sunshine.” How exactly the Healing Center’s “study” arrived at this number is unclear, given that Delaware, a state that is 22 degrees of latitude south of Anchorage (or more than 1,500 miles closer to the equator), is credited with only 240 hours of fall sunshine.

Delaware is number two on the list of bad states for seasonal depression while the states that surround it – New York, Maryland and New Jersey – are ranked 15th, 27th and 28th, respectively, thanks to their much greater dose of sunshine.

Maryland, which borders Delaware on the west, is reported to have 586 hours of fall sunshine while New Jersey, the adjacent state immediately to the north of Delaware, is reported to have 576 hours of sunshine.

Go figure.

One might guess these differences have something to do with hours of reported cloud cover, but the inches of reported rainfall in the fall months don’t vary much between New Jersey, Maryland and Delaware with the latter reported in the middle of a range from 3.58 to 3.76 inches.

Alaska is credited with 2.49 inches of gloomy, rainy days, which can only mean the state’s Panhandle was left out of the calculations. The state capital, Juneau, averages more than three times that much rain in the month of October alone and Ketchikan, with its 18.4-inch average for that month, drowns the reported Alaska average.

Anchorage, the state’s largest city, is below 2.49 at an annual average of 1.8 inches of precipitation in October, but Talkeetna, at the northern edge of the Southcentral region home to most of the state’s population, averages 2.78 inches for the month, and Seward, at the south edge of the region, averages a soaking 9.77 inches. 

Given that SAD is linked to a lack of sunlight, rainy days seldom help lift anyone’s mood. But then some people are depressed all the time.

Poor West Virginia

West Virginia scores big in this study with a “total depression prevalence” of 26.4, the highest in the nation. But how much that has to do with the change of season is unclear.

West Virginia is known to have a significant, year-round depression problem.

The state’s Boone and Logan counties have the highest rates of depression in the country, with nearly one in three residents so diagnosed. They are in what was coal country, but has become poverty country with the phasing out of coal as a national power source.

“One of the symptoms of depression is hopelessness,” psychologist Jessica Bradley told West Virginia Public Broadcasting when it reported on the state’s mental health problems. “And it’s so much easier to feel hopeless about things whenever the voices that you hear are telling you that there’s no hope.”

Alaskans appear to be among the more hopeful. The state’s reported 15.9 percent depression prevalence is about half the rate of West Virginia, and puts Alaska among 10 states with the nation’s lowest rate of depression.

That list is led by the sunny states of California and Florida at 14.1 and 14.7, respectively, but those numbers aren’t far off the number for the land of the midnight sun and the grim polar night when the state’s northernmost city goes dark for more than two months. 

One must, however, wonder if the reason Alaska’s official rate of depression is low is because the problem – especially that of the SAD kind – is simply underdiagnosed, as some have suggested.

“Depression is the most common condition associated with suicide, and it is often undiagnosed or untreated,” the state’s Mental Health Trust declared in 2023. 

In general, the American Psychiatric Association adds,  seasonal depression “prevalence increases at higher latitudes with SAD being more common in people living far from the equator where there are fewer daylight hours in the winter. 

“SAD has been linked to changes in the brain prompted by shorter daylight hours and less sunlight in winter. As seasons change, people experience a shift in their biological internal clock or circadian rhythm that can cause them to be out of step with their daily schedule.”

Still, it might help some to know it could be worse elsewhere. There is power in the placebo effect. And no one can argue with the home-treatment recommendations of the Legacy Healing Center’s Ben Fox:

“Even a short walk outside each day can make a difference. Light therapy lamps are effective, and keeping a consistent sleep schedule is key.”

Or maybe, if you’re living in Alaska’s largest city, invest in a pair of cross-country skis or a fatbike and use them. The nation’s northernmost metropolis boasts an urban/suburban trail system that is far, far better in winter than in summer with some notable, seasonal advantages.

No mosquitoes to bite you. No bears waiting to maul you. And miles and upon miles of lighted trail to make the long night feel a little more like the short day.

Meanwhile, if you want to hash over the places where it’s worse, here’s the whole list in which you might note the awfulness of a trio of warm states in the south – notably Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana – where the weather might be a lot warmer but the seasonal depression a lot worser.