Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and the “New Year’s Blues” continue to affect many people this time of year, with an estimated average of 10 million people reporting symptoms. When seasonal depression coincides with the holiday period, it’s often exacerbated by feelings of tension, uncertainty, social conflict, changed sleep patterns, and increased alcohol consumption. This year …

Seasonal depression is sometimes used as a punchline during the winter, but for many, the waning daylight has a very real effect on one’s mental health. You may experience mood swings, shifts in eating habits, and decreasing energy levels, and for some, the symptoms are so severe that winter disrupts their entire lives. Recently, research …

Self-care is about, as this Psychology Today article puts it, “identifying your own unique needs and taking steps to meet them…it’s provided for you, by you.” However, for people with depression, self-care can be hard to attain. There’s a neurobiological reason for this: depression leads to dysfunction in the frontal lobes, making self-care extremely difficult. …

It is a daunting task, sorting the wheat from the chaff when it comes to working out which nutritional supplements might be helpful for any given condition. When it comes to depression, however, help is at hand, in the form of a major meta-review of clinical trials conducted all over the world, involving more than …

Welcome news for chocolate lovers everywhere: less than half-an-ounce a day might keep depression at bay, according to a cross-sectional survey of over 13,000 US adults. The study, published July 29, 2019, in Depression & Anxiety, found that individuals who ate a small daily amount of dark chocolate had 70 percent lower odds of reporting …

It’s true that when you are depressed, even walking to the mailbox takes more energy than you have, and the very thought of “an exercise program” can make your heart sink. But a new study from Harvard researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital has some good news that might encourage you to make a modest but …