Whenever this time of year rolls around, the one thing that I cannot get over is the feeling of

walking out of the office on a weekday, afternoon, early evening, and having it be like 5.30.6 p.m. and it is already

completely dark outside. Like I feel like I've missed the entirety of daylight for

this day.

It makes it hard to feel like there's something joyful to look forward to.

I know that I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Our colleague Richard Sima has also talked about this. I struggle a lot in the

winter because it's so dark, so cold. So I definitely feel more lethargic. My

moods are easier to get down on. So yeah, it's a struggle for me and for millions of people

with the winter, with the dark. In a former life, Richard was a neuroscientist.

Now he's a journalist.

He writes a column for the post called Brain Matters,

and he decided to look into the science of why some people get depressed in the winter.

From the Newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post Reports. I'm Martine Powers, and it's Friday, December 8th,

aka, in a lot of parts of the US, the day with the earliest sunset of the year.

So today, producer Sabby Robinson is talking with Richard about why some of us get seasonal effective disorder, and what we can do about it.

I know that there is a specific term for this seasonal effective disorder.

What is seasonal effective disorder and how do you know if you have it?

Yeah, seasonal effective disorder with the very memorable acronym sad is basically the

seasonal change in people's mood where 5% of Americans have winter seasonal effective disorder, but many more find that winters are just more difficult for their mental well-being.

So you might feel more lethargic, have more depressed moods, your appetite might change.

And it's a type of depression, so it's something to be very aware of, but the good thing is because it's seasonal, it's also

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