It’s 6 a.m., and junior Diya Arun can’t get out of bed. The sky is dark, and she’s exhausted from a night of no sleep. She frantically rushes to school, disoriented from her stressful morning. She struggles to stay awake in her first two classes, fatigued and drained, and left with no motivation.

During the day, she looks around the school filled with excited students and holiday spirit, but she just feels emptiness. At 4:18 p.m., like all students, Arun races out of the classroom, ready to go home. As she exits the school, the cool air hits her face alongside the realization that going home entails completing a pile of assignments and hours of studying.

When she gets home from school, she immediately takes a nap but ends up oversleeping for four hours. With the daylight gone and overwhelming tiredness, she can’t find the energy to start her assignments. Now, she feels even more stressed out and has less time and willpower to complete her homework. From 9 p.m. to 1 a.m., she does her work, completely worn out. Her anxiety creates another restless night, and it’s an endless cycle of exhaustion.

The Holiday Blues

The struggles of some students can be seen firsthand at Rock Ridge, with winter starting to consume their daily lives. Some have become overtaken by the holiday blues, a condition that encompasses temporary feelings of anxiety, sadness, and negative emotions around the holiday and winter times.

This can be partly attributed to the shift in weather, where the gloomy atmosphere spreads to those afflicted, making it hard for them to feel optimistic during the darker and colder days. “It just gets so cold, and the sun also sets earlier,” junior Laasya Bandi said. “I get home, and then I don’t feel like doing anything. I just want to shower and sleep.”

The lack of sunlight affects the levels of serotonin, which is important in maintaining mental health and a more positive mood. Shorter daylight hours lower the levels of these molecules in the wintertime, causing symptoms of anxiety, insomnia, depression, and other mental health issues.

The constant dejection surrounding the seasonal change has affected the emotional well-being of some students, leading them to overall feel mentally worse. Pre-existing mental health issues are often exacerbated during the holiday season, and those without mental challenges may start to face new struggles. It has led some into a cycle of sadness and frustration, making them feel more hopeless than they ever have.

“ I think [the winter] has a negative effect on my mental health because I feel like the cold weather and people around me are also sadder [and] that affects me,” Arun said. “It’s just the whole environment in general. I just feel more lazy. I feel more tired. I don’t feel motivated to do anything.”

Bandi agrees with the overwhelming feeling of balancing the endlessly increasing workload while trying to keep her mental health in check. “I feel like things are just more rough at school [during the winter],” Bandi said. “ I have so much work, so many tests, and everything. I’m just not as motivated as I was at the beginning of the year. I feel like the second and third quarters are just so much harder compared to the other quarters.”

Winter Break Struggles 

The counseling department has noticed that the prospect of being away from school on a two-week long break is more stressful than exciting to some students. “Having more time at home [with] different students having different families, composites, and home lives, sometimes we see an uptick of students not really wanting to have time away from school,” school psychologist Dallas Swirchak said.

The transition from busy days and completing last-minute assignments to now being at home away from their daily routines is difficult for many students. They have an excessive amount of time to spend on their phones and less time to spend with peers unless they make that extra effort.

Counselor Jennifer Domingues agrees that the change in atmosphere results in a negative social impact on those who struggle. “Sometimes being around family all the time can be challenging for a teenage student,” Domingues said. “Or if they are cooping themselves up in their room and not really engaging — that could be hard for anyone. So I think sometimes people kind of miss that routine and consistency and coming in and socializing a little bit.”

Other factors attributed to holiday stress include financial instability, especially when gift giving, strained family relationships that can make the break more stressful than fun, and feeling lost with no purpose during time off. Feelings of sadness following grief and loss are often amplified during the holidays with such an emphasis on spending time with others.

The holiday time is something abundantly talked about on the internet and social media, creating false expectations that it’s going to be filled with endless joy and excitement, when in reality, that’s not the case for everyone. Disappointment during the holidays when people feel that everyone is happy except themselves can lead  to overwhelming feelings of isolation and loneliness. Coupled with the emotions winter induces upon people, the timing of the holidays falling within the season of winter causes some to feel emotionally drained and jaded.

Are You SAD?

More than just winter sadness, seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is a real issue. In most cases, it begins in the fall, continues throughout the winter time, and starts to disappear during the spring. The disorder also starts and ends at the same time every year. If a person experiences the disorder in the fall and/or winter, more often than not, they will feel better once spring and summer begin, but the “winter depression” will begin once more at the same it did the year before. However, despite common belief, it is possible for a person to experience depression in the spring and summer but feel better in the fall and winter.

Regardless of the time of the year, there are signs and symptoms a person can use to identify the disorder. For winter, a person might oversleep, have a craving for food high in carbohydrates, gain weight, and have low energy regardless of the time of day. For summer, the opposite will occur. A person can start having insomnia or trouble sleeping, lack of need for food, weight loss, agitation or anxiety, and an increase in irritability.

Nevertheless, SAD can drain some students of energy, causing them to lose motivation and hope. In the worst of cases, this disorder can bring out feelings of worthlessness or guilt, leading them to thoughts of not wanting to live. If this is the case for you or your loved ones, reach out to a trusted adult who can provide the necessary help to treat the disorder. Continue to the Reaching Out for Help section of this article to find resources to help you out.

Reaching Out for Help 

Often, it is difficult for some students to speak out about their struggles to people, especially counselors or adults.  Sometimes, just talking to a best friend or loved one is a struggle in itself. Counselors, like Domingues, find more often than not, it is the family or friends of the person struggling with their mental health that reaches out for the student. Luckily, they are equipped with programs that provide help. “It depends on what the student needs,” Domingues said. “If we’re talking about mental health, and the family is looking for a therapist, and they don’t have one, we make different recommendations. We can link up families with a program called Care Solace.”

Care Solace is a program Loudoun County uses that, following parent permission, the counselor can provide the student information, which will then connect the family to a therapist according to what the family prefers. It alleviates the burden of families not having to do all the phone calls themselves and search for a therapist. Care Solace can also reach out to their insurance and find which providers work best, and the families can make the calls if they wish to do so.

Domingues also believes that physical well-being can be a key indicator of mental health struggles, and she recommends that students facing issues should consider going to the pediatrician and find out if there are other factors that are impacting their mental health.

While these are helpful tools families can use to treat themselves and the student, there are other things that a person can do without having to contact a separate party. For example, Domingues recommended coming up with a hobby the student is interested in that they can “hone in” when they feel stressed and/or lonely. “They say working out is always beneficial,” Domingues said. “So, even if you’re not a person that likes to work out, go for a walk if the weather is reasonable. Hang out with friends. Hang out with family. Doing things that you enjoy definitely helps you go through the winter blues.”

The school psychologist, Swirchak, also emphasizes the significance of having relationships with others for better mental health.  “I think we learned this, especially during COVID, how important connection is—connection with others, whether that’s family or friends—and we found that it is really important to whether we spend time with our families that we were born into or a chosen family,” Swirchak said. “Connection is incredibly important for overall mental well-being.”

Swirchak is quick to remind students that if they feel the need to have someone else help them through tough times, regardless of the time of year, there are hotlines and websites that can help people. When school is in session, she highlights how the door to Rock Ridge’s counseling department is always open to each and every student.

This story was originally published on The Blaze on December 20, 2024.