The rain pounds against the roof and the windows, surrounding the house. It’s only midday but it’s dark outside, and the wind howls. Anna Romanovsky, a Carlmont sophomore, lays curled on her bed, huddled under a blanket, not wanting to go outside.

She watches the storm through the window, sipping hot chocolate with the TV playing in the background. Separated from her friends by walls of water, Romanovsky can do nothing but wait for the storm to end.

“I feel like during the winter, the mood is just so depressing, and I just feel unmotivated and cold all the time,” Romanovsky said. “I’m way more happy when it’s sunny outside, but when it’s gloomy outside, it kind of brings everything down because I feel like the day is not going to be that good.”

Changing moods is only one of the potential symptoms of mental health illnesses brought on by the weather.

Causes of mental health problems

Mental health problems can stem from a variety of weather-related causes and are experienced by a large percentage of the population. According to the World Health Organization, one in every eight people was living with a mental disorder around the world in 2019. Environmental factors can increase the likelihood of developing mental health illnesses, according to the National Library of Medicine. These factors include temperature changes and extreme weather events and can cause problems such as seasonal depression and increased aggressive behaviors or suicides.

Shelley Bustamante, the Carlmont Mental Health Support Specialist, explains the impacts of mental health challenges such as depression.

“Symptoms show up after the trauma and can include loss of sleep, sleeping more, sleeping less, eating more, eating less, inability to focus or concentrate, isolation, irritability, nightmares, and hypervigilance,” Bustamante said.

Bustamante’s explanation of the causes of mental health challenges revolves around trauma and how different events can disrupt the stability and structure of a person’s life. 

Another idea for why mental health problems develop is the theme of nature versus nurture. Nature is the things that people are born with, and nurture is the environment.

Marcus Beltramo, the Carlmont psychology teacher, talks about how different nature and nurture factors can impact an individual. For example, genetics is a nature factor, whereas socioeconomic status and education are nurture factors.

“Some of us are impacted by the things that we are born with. Some people have a predisposition to certain types of challenges. Some people, in terms of nurture, grow up in environments that are very difficult. And so those two things put together can influence somebody’s mental health,” Beltramo said.

Effects of mental health problems

While there is no single cause for mental health challenges, scientists believe that most problems stem from issues with neurotransmission, or the communication between neurons in the brain, according to the National Library of Medicine. This can be seen in depression patients, as they have lower levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin. 

Serotonin levels rise and fall with the seasons, as they are impacted by the amount of sunlight the human body receives. However, having levels that are too low can lead to serious mental consequences.

Especially problematic during the winter months, lack of sunlight can lead to low serotonin levels and influence peoples’ circadian rhythms, which are repeating daily cycles. Serotonin is the hormone that controls mood and feelings of well-being, and having low levels can lead to feelings of depression and lethargy. Mental Health America says about 5% of people in the United States experience seasonal affective disorder (SAD).

“It is a disorder that is experienced by a large number of people. How it presents is you may be feeling great, accomplishing all you need to do in your life. And then all of a sudden it shifts when the seasons change, and you get more clouds as fall is going into winter. More rain, more barometric pressure, and it’s a kind of heaviness that impacts the person’s ability to function as well as they did prior to this change,” Bustamante said.

Seasonal affective disorder

Most people know SAD by the name “seasonal depression.” This is because people with SAD often display symptoms similar to those with other forms of depression. However, seasonal depression symptoms are only present during one part of the year, disappearing during the rest.

More often than not, seasonal depression occurs during the fall and winter months, according to the Mayo Clinic. Also, because winter days are shorter, and there are longer periods of darkness, sleep schedules can be affected.

Increased levels of darkness lead to melatonin being produced at higher rates. Melatonin is a sleep-related hormone, and having more of it produced can cause sleep problems, which is one of the symptoms of seasonal depression.

One of the primary ways of combating seasonal depression ties into light. SAD patients can get light therapy treatment in order to fight back against the negative effects of the disorder.

“Researchers took a group of people who experienced seasonal depression. In one group, they gave them light which was similar to that of the morning sun, and 62% of participants experienced relief from their depressive symptoms. They gave people light that duplicated the evening sun as well, and 50% of the participants felt relief from their symptoms,” Beltramo said.

The researchers also tried using simple white light from an ion generator, and only 32% of that group experienced relief. This use of light therapy, originally discovered in the 1980s, has become the main treatment for seasonal depression.

Besides SAD, people can experience other problems stemming from the weather. Bustamante reflects on other possible results of the weather.

“A lot of people get physical symptoms as a result of the weather. Some people start getting sinus headaches or migraines with the barometric changes. That can cause them to be depressed because they’re no longer able to function without medication,” Bustamante said.

Extreme heat and heat waves

As opposed to winter — and its risks for developing seasonal depression — summer weather can pose dangers to mental health too.

Suicide rates and aggressive behaviors shoot up during times of excessive heat. In seven U.S. cities, each time the temperature rose 5 degrees Celsius — or 9 degrees Fahrenheit —there were up to 5% more sex offenses the following week, according to The Lancet.

These aggressive behaviors often have a strong correlation to mental health problems. In a study by professors at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota, they found that “of 429 crimes committed by 143 offenders with mental illness, 3% related directly to depression, 4% to psychosis, and 10% to bipolar disorder, including impulsivity,” according to the American Psychological Association.

Climate change may mean that these behaviors will continue becoming more common, as warmer days become more frequent and average yearly temperatures rise. In Canada alone, annual temperatures rose by 1.7 degrees Celsius between 1948 and 2016, according to the Fraser Research Bulletin.

Climate change also causes stress and trauma for many, especially minority groups such as those who live in more fire-prone areas or have nowhere to go. Young people also tend to worry more about the effects of climate change on their futures, according to Adri Jayaratne, the Chief of Staff at the University of California, San Francisco’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.

“There is a growing field of mental health practitioners and clinicians who focus almost entirely on or are learning more about climate change. Concerns about climate change didn’t exist until relatively recently, so a lot of mental health professionals were not prepared to deal with somebody coming in and saying, ‘I can’t sleep because I’m so worried about climate change,’ or ‘I have anxiety. I can’t function because I’m so worried about the future,’” Jayaratne said.

Giving youth outlets to talk about their fears and anxieties has been found to be cathartic and helps middle and high-school-aged students get their worries off their chests, according to Jayaratne. For example, NPR runs a segment called StoryCorps where people can call in to talk about their lives.

Along with generally higher temperatures, heat waves are also becoming more common. The United States Environmental Protection Agency defines a heat wave as “a persistent period of unusually hot days,” and has collected data showing that heat wave occurrences have tripled since the 1960s.

This increase in the occurrences of heat waves may indicate a coming rise in mental health problems and aggressive behaviors, as more people will be exposed to more heat.

Extreme weather events

In addition to changing temperatures, the weather also includes extreme weather events such as floods, storms, and fires. People who go through these situations often experience worry and trauma, as observed in a study on mothers’ mental health by the European Journal of Psycho-traumatology.

Fires are increasingly becoming a concern for members of the Bay Area, according to Jayaratne. He also says that aside from physical effects like heat stroke or smoke inhalation, fires can result in related mental challenges.

“If you have a heat stroke, it’s devastating in a variety of ways, and it can affect your brain. A lot of these things can prevent you from working because you were injured or too hot. And so you begin to worry about income and where you’re going to sleep. Things which all lead to anxiety and depression,” Jayaratne said.

Exposure to extremely threatening or horrific events can lead to the development of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. PTSD is characterized by reexperiencing the traumatic event, avoiding memories of the event, and persistent perceptions of heightened current threat, according to the World Health Organization.

Bustamante says that extreme weather events can cause trauma, including PTSD in severe cases, for both those involved and first responders.

“Critical incident stress debriefing was created to help first responders to traumatic events, because arriving at the traumatic event, they would get secondary trauma. With their jobs, they were constantly being exposed to trauma, and it would take its toll on them, especially first responders like EMTs, fire rescue, and police law enforcement,” Bustamante said.

The life expectancy of first responders after retirement is 55 years old, due to the compounding daily stress. Also, this stress can impact married couples, as divorce rates go from 50% to 80% when there is a first responder involved, according to Bustamante.

Whether the weather impacts mental health through seasonal changes, temperature, or extreme weather events, it can have harmful effects that significantly impact individuals. People, especially youth and adolescents, are more at risk for suicide and assault due to weather-related causes, according to BMC Public Health. 

Feeling down with the weather is normal, but there are ways to combat the symptoms, be it therapy, medication, or even just by being aware of the emotional danger that the weather can pose.

“Giving people actionable ways to address the anxieties that they have over climate change can be helpful. That could be working at a community garden, conservation efforts and clean up, all sorts of things that are good for addressing climate change itself and good for the person. Getting outside is helpful is good in a variety of ways. When people are in nature and the environment, toxins, stress, and a lot of that kind of stuff disappears,” Jayaratne said.