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Frozen: Seasonal Affective Disorder


What could have happened if Elsa could not learn how to revert her magic on Arendelle? What could have happened to the town’s people? Well, the kingdom should be prepared to have a horde of people with something called Seasonal Affective Disorder (also known as SAD).
Sometimes called the “Winter Blues”, Seasonal Affective Disorder is a type of depression that comes and goes with the seasons, typically starting in the early winter and going away during the spring or summer. It is thought that SAD is caused by the decreased sunlight, resulting in people that become more tired, sad, agitated, fat and depressed. It is still not exactly sure how this happens in the body, but it seems to occur due to changes in the body’s natural sleep/wake cycle, decreasing levels of serotonin (a brain chemical that affects mood) and/or a decrease in your level of melatonin (which affect mood and sleep patterns), which is caused by the decreased daylight hours.
SAD can lead to many problems, such as social withdrawal, school or work problems, substance abuse, suicidal thoughts/behavior and other mental health disorders such as anxiety or eating disorders. But luckily, there are some treatments to ease this depression:
  1. Medication: Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs), are antidepressant medications used to treat SAD. As with other medications, there are side effects to it, so I recommend talking to your doctor about the possible risks of using this medication before trying it on yourself.
  2. Psychotherapy: Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a type of psychotherapy that is effective for SAD. It relies on basic techniques, such as identifying negative thoughts and replacing them with positive ones, along with a technique called behavioral activation, that seeks to help the person identify activities that are engaging and pleasurable, to improve coping with winter. 
  3. Light Therapy: Last, but not least, is the light therapy. Now, the idea behind this is to replace the diminished sunshine of the fall and winter months using daily exposure to bright, artificial light. Symptoms of SAD may be relieved by sitting in front of a light box first thing in the morning, on a daily basis from the early fall until spring, like around 60 minutes each day. 
This disorder doesn't take place in all people, but there are some factors that increase your chances of becoming depressed, such as living somewhere far from the Equator (just like Arendelle, a Nordic kingdom), being of a young age, like a kid or teen, or from your family history, if there ever was a family case of depression.
So, after this being said, we can say that we were lucky that the Queen managed to nail the solution and revert her magic... If not, maybe half of the people would be dead by now.

Photograph by @photosforyou

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