Light therapy lights can work wonders, says Alex Ridley.Sophie Buck

“In England it rains 200 days out of the year!” exclaims Poppy in one of the opening scenes of Wild Child. This main character is a misbehaving teen who’s being sent from her home in sunny California to an all-girls boarding school in England. “You will definitely get SAD”, exclaims her friend. “She is sad,” says Poppy’s sister. The friend scoffs. “Seasonal Affective Disorder: depression due to lack of sunlight resulting in acne and weight gain”, she explains matter-of-factly.

As it turns out, Poppy doesn’t get SAD. She meets a handsome English boy, makes some great friends, and realises that maybe the move wasn’t so bad after all. My own transatlantic move, however, was less glamourous. Living in a tropical Caribbean country up until the age of 13, I had my fair share of rain during the rainy seasons, but also plenty of sun: the sun set at about 6pm pretty much all year round, and I never had to get up before sunrise. My first winter in Switzerland came as a bit of a shock, not because of the cold or the snow or the dreariness, but because of how it made me feel.

"My mood mirrored the colour of the sky – grey day, grey feelings. Rainy day, crying non-stop"

Suddenly, getting up in the morning wasn’t just difficult because ‘I can’t be bothered to go to school today,’ but because ‘I cannot think of one reason why I should get out of bed when I feel this exhausted.’ My mood mirrored the colour of the sky – grey day, grey feelings. Rainy day, crying non-stop – I was angry at myself: why did I feel this way? I had no real reason to be sad and tired all the time.

Then summer would come along and I would be fine, and I could tell myself and others that I’d simply had a rough couple of months. Which was true, but what I wasn’t implying or realising was that this was a pattern that I would have to live with every year, possibly for the rest of my life – unless I move back to a Caribbean country, which wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.

The only year that this hasn’t happened, my mother pointed out recently, was the year I fell in love for the first time. We started going out in October, and that winter I was still as happy as could be. We broke up over a year later, in February, after a winter of me feeling helpless and unmotivated, and not knowing how to communicate this to the person who had only ever known me as a happy, mildly stressed person.

Last term I went to speak to my college nurse about how I was feeling. This is the best decision I ever made relating to my SAD. I highly recommend speaking to college nurses, as they aren’t invested in or overly concerned about your academic performance, but rather focused on you being a happy and functioning individual in and out of the Cambridge context.

I’d already been using a wake-up light for years: the light brightens slowly, mimicking a rising sun and making it much easier to get out of bed when the alarm rings. The nurse, however, recommended a Lumie therapy light, and was even able to get me one through college. These lights have been shown to completely abolish symptoms in many SAD sufferers, and I have found using one immensely helpful. The nurse also went through a mental health diagnosis questionnaire with me when I was feeling at my absolute lowest, and I came out as having both depression and anxiety, results that I’m sure would be completely reversed if I were to go through the questionnaire again in a couple months.

Exercise and routine have been two more things that have helped. Rowing got me up and moving in the morning, and I was able to get some natural light before starting my academic day. I have many contact hours, with lectures, practicals, supervisions and deadlines all at different days and times every week. Routine has therefore come in the form of being strict about getting up for my 9ams, not working after dinner, as well as multiple check-lists and a comprehensive diary. 

Every winter I will expect the blues to come again, but I will continue finding more things that help, and talking to more people who are able to help me – whether that’s by telling me that the UL has 40 Lumie desklamps dotted around, or lying on the floor with me at 2am when everything feels pointless, or gently encouraging me to get up in the morning. And through it all, I will be eternally grateful that Cambridge exams are in May and not February