by Alexa Peters

Winter blues, low spirits, whatever you want to call it — many Americans become depressed when the winter sets in. This type of mood imbalance, tied intimately to seasonal changes and shorter days, is known in the latest edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) as a major depressive disorder with a seasonal pattern, or more commonly as Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).