Living with SAD: practicing cultures of seasonality to 'feel light' differently.
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Glasgow
Department Name: School of Geographical & Earth Sciences
Abstract
Picture the scene. It's one we can all identity with, at some level: late October. The clocks have gone back. The mornings are colder and certainly looking darker. Light itself feels like a precious and endangered thing. A shift is underway. Marked by a downturn in energy and mood, it's tougher to get up for work, feels harder to think clearly, or to muster much in the way of enthusiasm. During the worst spells, there's an unmistakable feeling of sinking ...
Feelings associated with the changing seasons, and moods that seem to be governed by the nature of the weather overhead and related qualities of natural light, are a phenomenon known to us all. Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is an intensified form of this lived experience that, for considerable numbers of people in the UK, can be debilitating and limiting, resulting in emotional challenges, lowered mood, and feelings of anxiety. This research project enters the lived experience of SAD, seeking to examine its occurrence and impacts in individuals' life-worlds. Working closely with people who self-identify as experiencing depression on a SAD spectrum, the research team will develop narrative, creative and therapeutic-educational resources more fully to examine and reflect SAD experiences, and to build a self-help programme to be hosted by the NHS-approved website, 'Living Life to the Full', to which over 40,000 people register annually. The programme will offer a range of well-being interventions to mitigate against negative experiences of lightness-darkness and changing seasons, in both urban and rural environments.
The research team combines differing skills and approaches, suited to interdisciplinary practice and public engagement. It is comprised of cultural geographers and a creative arts-health practitioner, jointly working with a cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) expert. By focusing attention on SAD as a widely experienced, but poorly understood, affective phenomenon, the research project will have considerable public impact, initiating national conversations about addressing questions of how to live well through altered seasonal patterns and envisaging the sorts of adaptive life skills and cultural tools required for the mental health challenges now associated with global climate change. A network of project partnerships held with national-level organisations will leverage our finding to create meaningful 'national conversations' on mental health, sustainability and climate resilience in the public sector. Our partners - an expert advisory group - will ensure strategic input to the project, and have already helped us identify clear pathways to generate research impact. In future times, we all might be at risk of feeling SAD in relation to changing climate conditions (stormier weather and smoke-filled darker skies) and this project offers targeted resources to help mitigate these affects, as well as offering guided ways to increase creative and embodied connections between people and outdoor environments.
Feelings associated with the changing seasons, and moods that seem to be governed by the nature of the weather overhead and related qualities of natural light, are a phenomenon known to us all. Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is an intensified form of this lived experience that, for considerable numbers of people in the UK, can be debilitating and limiting, resulting in emotional challenges, lowered mood, and feelings of anxiety. This research project enters the lived experience of SAD, seeking to examine its occurrence and impacts in individuals' life-worlds. Working closely with people who self-identify as experiencing depression on a SAD spectrum, the research team will develop narrative, creative and therapeutic-educational resources more fully to examine and reflect SAD experiences, and to build a self-help programme to be hosted by the NHS-approved website, 'Living Life to the Full', to which over 40,000 people register annually. The programme will offer a range of well-being interventions to mitigate against negative experiences of lightness-darkness and changing seasons, in both urban and rural environments.
The research team combines differing skills and approaches, suited to interdisciplinary practice and public engagement. It is comprised of cultural geographers and a creative arts-health practitioner, jointly working with a cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) expert. By focusing attention on SAD as a widely experienced, but poorly understood, affective phenomenon, the research project will have considerable public impact, initiating national conversations about addressing questions of how to live well through altered seasonal patterns and envisaging the sorts of adaptive life skills and cultural tools required for the mental health challenges now associated with global climate change. A network of project partnerships held with national-level organisations will leverage our finding to create meaningful 'national conversations' on mental health, sustainability and climate resilience in the public sector. Our partners - an expert advisory group - will ensure strategic input to the project, and have already helped us identify clear pathways to generate research impact. In future times, we all might be at risk of feeling SAD in relation to changing climate conditions (stormier weather and smoke-filled darker skies) and this project offers targeted resources to help mitigate these affects, as well as offering guided ways to increase creative and embodied connections between people and outdoor environments.
Publications
Bodden S
(2024)
In a positive light? experiencing Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and the promise of biosolidarity
in Social & Cultural Geography
Bodden, S
SAD geographies
in Progress in Human Geography
Bodden, S
'In a positive light?' Experiencing Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and the promise of biosolidarity
in Social and Cultural geography
Bodden, S, Parr, H, Lorimer H
Spaces of Mental Health and Well-Being
Boddon S
(2024)
SAD geographies: Making light matter
in Progress in Geography
| Title | Light is a Right |
| Description | Light is a Right is a cultural bookwork guide to living well in winter - informed by the reseatch project and co-produced with the artist partner Alec Finlay |
| Type Of Art | Creative Writing |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | It has been signposted as 'further help' by the online advice from the Royal College of Psychiatrists in 2024. https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/mental-health/mental-illnesses-and-mental-health-problems/seasonal-affective-disorder-(sad) |
| URL | https://issuu.com/livingwithsad/docs/light_is_a_right_issuu |
| Description | The Living with SAD research project had the following objectives: 1.To engage with how people embody and narrate 'seasonal affect'. 2. To explore the role that creative geographies/geohumanities can play in helping to understand the emotional disorder that people experience according to qualities of light, climate, weather and seasonality. 3. To develop and test a supportive educational intervention culminating in a modification of an existing CBT-based life skills course (www.llttf.com) for people experiencing depression on a SAD spectrum. 4. To expand the scholarly connections between cultural geographies/creative geohumanities and geographies of mental health in ways that are relevant to the general public. 5. To network the self-help resources for seasonal resilience in a time of climate change Progress to date: The objectives have been achieved (1-4) and /or planning is underway to deliver these in 2024 (5). Summary: The ESRC Living with SAD research project has engaged with how people embody and narrate 'seasonal affect' by exploring the lived experience of Seasonal Affective Disorder. We have done that via social science methods and creative geohumanities. We have worked closely with people who self-identify as experiencing depression on a SAD spectrum, and the research team has developed an inventory of free, public self-help resources to mitigate against negative wintertime experience, which we are sharing via a research impact strategy, to create an evidence base demonstrating how cultural geographies can make a difference to public mental health. Recruitment and engagement: The project team have combined quantitative, qualitative and creative methods used to develop a broad picture of experiences of SAD across the UK and in-depth understanding of SAD occurrence in Glasgow and West Scotland. To date, this has included: • A national survey completed by 350 participants representing 91 UK postcodes • 45 narrative interviews with individuals affected by SAD in the west of Scotland • 7 creative practice-led participatory workshops with 20 individuals experiencing SAD in Glasgow, co-designed with artist Alec Finlay • 8 personal wintertime seasonal diaries recording patterns of SAD-affected thoughts and behaviour in day-to-day life. Findings The many accounts shared through The Big SAD Survey (Bodden et al, 2022) testify to the diverse range of experiences of winter affect and SAD, but also shared challenges, concerns and feelings. Experiences of winter affect involve distinctive, if often interrelated phases: the changing season and environment can produce smaller, greyer, 'reduced' worlds; the changes in weather and light make everyday activities more difficult causing people to feel 'stuck' and 'left behind'; consequently, people face feelings of guilt and 'pressure' as they struggle to keep up with the social world or strategically avoid it; and as they find signs of spring, develop routines, or share wintering strategies, people find ways to feel 'hopeful', although it can be jeopardised by dismissive attitudes or 'misunderstanding'. Living with Seasonal Affective Disorder is a profound experience for those people reporting to the research project. A summary of findings of their experience of seasonal affect is included below, as is their experience of being part of 'Wintering Well workshops', which aimed to re-encounter winter in a supported interdisciplinary research design. • People experiencing low mood or SAD in winter have limited social and medical support • SAD is an annual condition, prefaced with anticipatory anxiety. • The value of biosocial community making was clearly expressed • Winter experience and winter depression can be improved by creative interventions • SAD and light exposure in winter can be 're-thought' when accompanied by new light routines and planning for social and outdoor activity • Reorganising indoor light can bring a sense of control and active management of winter depression • The Wintering Well workshop programme culminated in a self-managed legacy group • Health and social care agencies welcome new ways to help people with low mood in winter The findings - only headlined above - are being reported in academic publications and media communications. Key Outcomes Public outcomes (to date) The project has produced a range free-to-access public-facing outcomes, including: 1) An educational intervention via a CBT-shaped course: Living Life to the Full: SAD | Online Course: https://llttf.com/sad/ 2) Light is a Right: A Guide to Wintering Well | Creative Book: https://issuu.com/livingwithsad/docs/light_is_a_right_issuu 3) Wintering Together | Workshop Toolkit for community organisers: https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/321135/1/321135.pdf All free resources are also available on a public website. https://www.gla.ac.uk/research/az/livingwithsad/winteringwell/resources/. The public website has had over 1700 users (by March, 2024). The research project has launched these resources as part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science in 2023 and has communicated the findings in other public events, such as those organised by the Royal Philosophical Society's 2024 Public Lecture programme and the Glasgow Science Festival 2024. Public engagement Media Coverage The project has been profiled by several prominent news outlets, including: STV News, BBC Scotland Outdoors Podcast and a range of digital and print media and these are gathered on the Living with SAD website: https://www.gla.ac.uk/research/az/livingwithsad/news/. We have a media strategy and will relaunch the public resources in 2024 and annual as the clocks change in Autumn. Research impact. Research impact will be reported fully 12 months after the end of the funding. The research team are engaging constantly with existing and new potential public users of the ESRC research. Academic publications (progress to date). Five academic publications are either available or in revision or forthcoming at point of report. A further 4 publications are being prepared communicating aspects of the creative geohumanities workshop programme for cultural geographers and social and clinical psychologists and these will be reported in March 2025. Interdisciplinary peer education and publication The research project was organised in such a way as to give the PDRA independence to explore interdisciplinarity and how this works in practice via the research team. Shawn Bodden presented to the 'Constructing Sites of Interdisciplinarity' conference in January 2024 and has written an accompanying publication which focuses on the role of 'the project' in organising, facilitating, and evaluating interdisciplinary research. Peer training presentations have taken place at the University of Edinburgh and University of Glasgow and the Royal Geographical Society. Climate change and mental health The findings and public-facing resources hold implications for public responses to the challenges of climate change and mental health. These have been articled in a public lecture in 2024 and to Public Health Scotland. A policy-facing event is currently being planned for September 2024. |
| Exploitation Route | We are working with a range of organisations and individuals to take the research findings forward. |
| Sectors | Communities and Social Services/Policy Healthcare |
| Description | Narrative impact Research impact will be reported fully 12 months after the end of the funding. Already we have emerging engagement and potential social impact with public, social and health care organisations: 'Living with SAD' : online education module. The project team worked with Living life to the Full (llttf.com) to co-produce a free online education module using findings from the Wintering Well workshop and consulting with 2 experts-by-experience from the programme. 110 people registered to use the module since October 2023. LTTF.com have advertised the module to 16,000 newsletter readers and 7000 professional readers. They are building an evaluation strategy with the team to secure evaluation of use of this free public health intervention. The challenge is finding ways of securing increasing numbers of registrations and course evaluations and we shall continue to work with LTTF.com to improve this. Other social and health care organisations have engaged with the project outcomes and resources: • NGO Change Mental Health have met with the project team and as a result have shared the resources with their 27 Highland community link workers and their public website: https://changemh.org/conditions/seasonal-affective-disorder-sad/ • Royal College of Psychiatrists who have adopted one of our resources as recommended 'further help': https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/mental-health/mental-illnesses-and-mental-health-problems/seasonal-affective-disorder-(sad) • East Dunbartonshire Library Service are planning to pilot a Winter Wellness programme using our resources across 2024-2025 in partnership via an ESRC IAA application. • NHS GGC Link Worker programme is piloting the resources with 4 GP practices. The challenges of achieving impact relate to the substantial time needed to develop the appropriate links and communicate with the right non-academic partners to achieve impactful uptake of public facing resources at time when a great deal of analysis and writing has to be undertaken by the project team. Media and follow-on engagement Development and phased use of a media strategy has helped enlarge the project's public profile, with the PI and Co-I dedicating specific time for media work. Significant time is being given to developing partnerships for social impact, via meetings with Health Improvement Leads, NGOs, Public Health Scotland and Library Services. Evaluation and impact: we have an evaluation strategy and have accumulated evaluation from the 'Wintering Well' workshop participants about the social impact of the programme. PI is following up with participants one year on and developing a range of evaluation tools (via QR codes, letter formats, on-line forms, group and individual discussions) and agreements with partners to find ways to evidence the social impact of the public resources. There are challenges with trying to secure evidence over time and via online tools. The project advisory group has been consulted on evaluation strategies and the Glasgow Science Festival Director has been working with the team on this. We should be able to report more on the impact of our public resources within 12 months. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2023 |
| Sector | Communities and Social Services/Policy,Healthcare |
| Impact Types | Cultural Societal |
| Title | Living with SAD dataset |
| Description | This will be open access datet delivered to the UK data service at the end of the project. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2024 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | it will be deposited at the end of award in 2024 and closed for 12 months and then open in 2025 |
| Description | National centre for Resilence |
| Organisation | National Centre for Resilience |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Public |
| PI Contribution | The Art of Communicating Resilience Conference - National Centre for Resilience The RA for Living with SAD have contributed to the NCR resilence events. The group included interdisciplinary researchers and a range of 'resilience professionals' (e.g. first-aid trainers, flood defence planners, park rangers). We had a series of conversations in small groups, during which time we introduced the Living with SAD project and drew on our work to reflect on strategies for using creativity-led methods for resilience-engagement and -building. The event allowed the team to introduce the topic of mental health as a resilience concern, and apply findings from our research to highlight the importance of addressing 'long-term' or 'quiet' social crises (like mental health challenges in the context of climate change) within resilience frameworks/planning. |
| Collaborator Contribution | The partners have privided staff time to our advisory board and continue to help network us with partners. |
| Impact | The partbnership is about advising, networking and forward planning for climate change with policy partners and professions. |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Title | Wintering Well |
| Description | We are piloting Wintering Well resources - the creative bookwork, the CBT module and the community toolkit guide with Glasgow's Community link worker service. We will get evaulation in April 2024 to see if this can support a rollout across 80 GP surgeries which include social prescription as part of the link worker programme. |
| Type | Products with applications outside of medicine |
| Current Stage Of Development | Small-scale adoption |
| Year Development Stage Completed | 2023 |
| Development Status | Under active development/distribution |
| Impact | Link workers and health improvment officers have expressed interest in using to support people with low mood in Glasgow in winter |
| Description | Blog and website |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | A regular blog reporting on the Wintering Well series - distributed to a sign-up audience of 90 people and disseminated via social media https://www.gla.ac.uk/research/az/livingwithsad/blog/ The website has recorded 1700 users to date (March 2024). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022,2023,2024 |
| URL | https://www.gla.ac.uk/research/az/livingwithsad/sad_project/ |
| Description | Conference Session - Seasonal Cultures and Elements of Change |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Royal Geographical Society conference session across two session. Has led to Nordic Network and visit in 2024. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://www.gla.ac.uk/research/az/livingwithsad/blog/headline_912058_en.html |
| Description | International conference presentation: Biosociality and Environmental Illness symposium, June 21, 2022 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Biosociality and Environmental Illness symposium, June 21, 2022 in Uppsala Sweden 40 interdisciplinary researchers |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | International conference presentation: International Medical Geography Conference |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | An academic presentation on Biosociality and SAD to HEI academic and post graduate and post-doctoral researchers. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | International conference presentation: Royal Geographical Society |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | A presentation to an online audience profiling the ESRC project 'Living with SAD' and communicating theoretical frameworks to an academic audience of ERC, Post doctoral students and HEI staff. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Media profiling of Living with SAD on TV and Radio |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Media (as a channel to the public) |
| Results and Impact | Good Morning Scotland, BBC Radio Scotland 29/10/2022 An Là on BBC Alba 14/11/2022 (television) BBC Radio Berkshire Interview 28/11/2022 Multiple interviews, TV, radio and print media in 2023-4 as the outcomes were launched. Parr and Lorimer (Pi and Co-I) were leading the media engagement. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022,2023,2024 |
| URL | https://www.gla.ac.uk/research/az/livingwithsad/news/ |
| Description | Royal Philosophical Society Public lecture |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Hester Parr gave a public lecture to 300-400 people on Climate Change and Mental Health and drew on the Living with SAD findings. Public Health Scotland have now requested a seminar for their mental health team. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://www.royalphil.org/event/professor-hester-parrwhy-we-should-think-about-the-relationship-betw... |
| Description | Wintering Well workshop series |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Wintering Well is a co-designed outdoor workshop series which has recruited 20 people who experience SAD to take part in a creative intervention programme. Entry and Exit interviews and entry and exit mood surveys are measuring the impact of this workshop series. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022,2023 |
| URL | https://www.gla.ac.uk/research/az/livingwithsad/sad_project/ |