This is NPR's Life Kit. I'm Kavitha Kadusa.

Seasonal affective disorder may not be typical inspiration for a song,

but Maya, then a teenager, was trying to understand her feelings.

She's a singer-songwriter from California and doesn't use her last name to protect the privacy

of her family. She goes by the name MXMTune.

I was feeling sad, looking outside, seeing that the weather was really bad and that it was dark

outside, like just lying there for hours and hours, not knowing how to get out of bed and move

or do anything, and it just makes it really difficult to do basic normal things, like getting up

and going to eat a meal or going to drink water or even using the bathroom.

But being 16 instead of asking her parents or teachers or doctor, she tweeted about it.

I went on Twitter and I was like, am I crazy? Because I feel really sad right now and the weather

is really horrible and I don't like it. And people are like, that sounds like you have seasonal

affective disorder. It's like sad and you should look into it. So I talked to my parents and they're like,

yeah, that's also something that I experience and go through and talk to my friends and they're like,

yeah, that's also something that I go through and I just realized that everybody feels horrible

whether outside also makes you feel horrible inside and so that's how I kind of discovered it.

Today on this episode of LifeKit, we're talking about seasonal affective disorder or sad.

It's a type of depression that's related to the change in seasons. Maybe you've never put a name

to why come winter, you just want to stay under the covers all day or didn't want to meet friends

or just felt like you were in a fog all the time. We're going to talk about why you feel this way

and simple ways to feel better, more like yourself.

Dr Norman Rosenthal is a clinical professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University School of Medicine.

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