Google Searches For Mental Illnesses Increase During The Winter
Verschneite Landschaft Wikimedia Commons, TheNoOneA new study suggests seasonal changes have a much bigger impact on mental health than previously thought. Psychiatrists have known about seasonal affective disorder--a mood disorder in which otherwise healthy people experience depression during the winter or heightened anxiety during the summer--since the early 1980s. Treatment for the winter blues often involves light therapy, with the idea being that short, dark days are kind of depressing. But a new study suggests that all mental major illnesses, including anxiety, eating disorders, schizophrenia, ADHD, bipolar, and OCD, might get worse during the winter. Researchers analyzed Google searches for information about mental health in the U.S. and Australia from 2006 to 2010. They found that, in both countries, all mental illness queries were consistently higher in winter than in summer. During U.S. summers, searches for eating disorders and schizophrenia declined 37 percent; ADHD queries fell by 28 percent; and...