Tag: Psychology

On a Sad Monday

Seasonal Affective Disorder is one of those afflictions that sounds made up to explain how many people feel these days. And it is one of those things somewhat, but it also describes a real situation for many people during the winter in the Northern Hemisphere. When the daylight grows shorter and the clouds roll in, when people have to stay inside more often due to the foul weather, our negative moods increase. We add on holiday weight and enjoy a festive time of year, we share time with friends and family until January comes around and then…nothing. The parties are gone. The gifts we rejoiced over a few days earlier lie around the place, unused. We become depressed. It can be a serious, chronic condition and can be debilitating for some. All of that is true for many people. Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is merely giving a title to those feelings of depression that affect many this time of year.

Psychologists have been trying for years to put together some sort of list of symptoms and causes for SAD, but it’s been difficult. How long does it last? How is it first manifested? Does it affect single people differently than people in relationships? And so forth. SAD has been a slippery thing to define and explain scientifically. And that’s where Dr. Cliff Arnall came in. He managed to put a formula together that supposedly explains it all, and, even, he can pinpoint the exact day every year when SAD reaches its peak in the northern hemisphere. Now, that sounds like problem solved in a neat and scientifically packaged explanation. Oh, if it were only so simple!

Dr. Arnall is purported to be a psychology lecturer at Cardiff University in Wales. Turns out that he only lectured there in some evening classes for the extension program. Arnall’s formula to explain SAD was:

Later, Dr. Arnall changed the formula to:

Now, I know that you thought there would be no math. I’m math-averse, myself. But all those letters and thingies stand for such data as time, debt, days since Christmas, motivation, weather, failure to meet/hold/keep New Year resolutions, and so forth.

And it’s complete hokum.

You see, Dr. Arnall made the formula in conjunction with Sky Travel, a large travel agent company in the UK. The idea was that the company could “validate” their potential clients’ desires to book a summer holiday in January. The cure, they said, pointing to Arnall’s “scientifically proven” formula, was that what they were feeling was legitimate and that they needed to “cure” their Seasonal Affective Disorder by planning the ultimate vacation, thus giving them something to look forward to.

Well, newspapers pounced on the story (and Arnall), rightly calling out the pseudo-scientific theory and formulas. The papers pointed out that what the company was doing was diminishing the real effects of SAD and minimizing how truly devastating the disorder was to many people. But the the travel company didn’t care; the newspaper stories gave them the exact publicity they craved for their products. And, every year about this time, papers (and bloggers, too, apparently) write about Arnall and the formulas. One year, the travel company sent Arnall to the Canary Islands to “prove” that a vacation could help relieve the symptoms of SAD. Of course, the press covered the doctor’s trip, again giving his wacky theory more press. To prove that this man is a craven showman and hack, he later accepted money from an ice cream company to say that the opposite of SAD existed–the happiest day of the year, which he “proved” was near mid-summer’s day. Of course, you should celebrate it, he said, with ice cream.

What gets lost in all of this is that a specific day has now been set aside, due to Arnall’s theory, that is recognized as the peak of Seasonal Affective Disorder. It now has been declared that the third Monday of January each year is the peak of the SAD season. In a case of a fake something being close enough to reality to seem real, the public has latched onto the idea that one day is the pinnacle of a disorder.

The press has labeled that day Blue Monday.

On a Therapist’s Notes

The psychologist watched through the window of his office as the patient left the building. He turned to his desk, picked up a large microphone, and reached beneath the desk where a recording device stood ready.

A metallic click was heard as he began the recording. He picked up his notebook of the details of the meeting and began speaking.

Meeting Notes for Patient 1548, David W., 9 October, ’31.

Patient spoke at length today about his childhood and his formative years. He began with some of his earliest memories of being raised by a nanny more than his mother and father. Patient reported that the nanny would pinch him and cause him to cry when handing him to his mother or father so that the parents would immediately hand him back to her. He only realized this as a young man, but, at the time, he saw this as a rejection by his parents.

He then spoke about his father, who he reports was a stern disciplinarian. Such was the harshness of the father’s discipline that patient’s brother developed a stutter in response to it. Patient says he was able to emotionally disconnect from the relationship early on. On the other hand, patient spoke fondly of his grandfather and grandmother, with whom he would spend many holidays. His father, wishing the young boy to learn discipline, sent him in to the navy at age 15.

The father then decided to send patient to university, but he says that he was not intellectually or emotionally ready for academia. He dropped out without completing a degree. Patient says that his failure at university greatly disappointed the father. When the war began, the father then insisted that the patient enlist in a front-line unit, but he says he saw only limited action despite being sent to the front lines. Patient seemed a bit embarrassed by his lack of heroism in the war. I reminded him that he performed well enough to earn the Military Cross in 1916, but he waved that off. His father, he said, was not impressed despite positive reports of his bravery by his senior officers.

Patient exhibited strong emotion when speaking of the death of his youngest brother, Johnny. The boy apparently died from seizures at age 11 when patient was 23. Patient said he wrote a strongly worded letter to his mother and father, accusing them of keeping Johnny caged in his room like an animal, and that his body was discovered much later after the seizure. Although he claims he “barely knew” his little brother, he felt it incumbent upon himself to chastise his parents for their neglect. When asked why he felt it was his responsibility to speak on behalf of a brother he had no close relationship with, patient tearfully admitted that he was writing his parents to take out his own lack of relationship and responsibility for his younger sibling and project it on her.

Patient agreed to return next week, and said he wished to speak of his new relationship with an American divorced woman.

Transcribe and put into patient’s file.

The psychologist turned off the recording device and sat back in his chair. He looked out the window at the London street that bustled with traffic. He let out a small sigh.

No one said that being a therapist to Edward, Prince of Wales, and next in line to the throne of the British Empire, would be easy.