In her debut major-label studio album, "Born to Die," Lana Del Rey sings, “I got that summertime sadness.” While the song, aptly titled "Summertime Sadness," explores the nostalgia and grief of a doomed romance, it also touches on a deeper emotional state — depression.
Summer-onset seasonal affective disorder (SAD), which is now often referred to as major depressive disorder (MDD) with seasonal pattern, is a form of SAD whose onset occurs during the spring and summer months and typically subsides by the fall. Unlike the "winter blues," the more commonly recognized form of SAD associated with colder months which affects about 3 percent of the population, the summer variant is less studied and rarer, with a prevalence of just 0.1 percent (Munir et al, 2024).
Unlike the winter form, where lack of sunlight is a known trigger for depressive symptoms, summer depression may be triggered by excessive sunlight instead. In theory, overexposure to sunlight can disrupt melatonin production, a hormone critical for regulating sleep cycles. This can disrupt our circadian rhythms, which has been linked across numerous studies to depression (Pandi-Perumal, 2020).
According to the 2015 paper "Seasonal........