During the winter months at Hamilton College we experience temperatures anywhere from 5 degrees below freezing to 40 above, not including windchill. Just last year there was a campus-wide email circulating in February reminding everyone to bundle up a little extra in an effort to try not to lose any extremities as we approached temperatures as low as 15 degrees below freezing. When the temperature is on the more extreme end and the wind is blowing furiously we avoid traveling out of our warm buildings as much as possible. Many of us students, myself included, often joke about getting cabin fever from being inside for the duration of these bitter January and February months. In psychological terms, cabin fever is known as seasonal affective disorder, or SAD. For some students, their anxiety and depression from being stuck indoors may progress into SAD, and fortunately for them, they have access to the school counseling center. In more remote places such as parts of the Adirondacks, however, where temperatures are often even colder than here in Clinton, help is not always as easy to find.
Like most public health services in the Adirondacks, the few mental health facilities in the region are located towards the outskirts of the park. A google search for mental health services in the Adirondacks reveals only a few private practices clustered in Essex County near Lake Champlain, and a larger mental hospital, the Central New York Psychiatric center in Mohawk Valley. Within the depths of the park access to any sort of counseling services is extremely limited and during the winter traveling is usually difficult. Therefore people suffering from SAD in the Adirondacks learn to cope with the condition on their own. Just like so many other things in the park that natives must learn to be self-sufficient in, they have to learn to keep themselves happy during the cold, dark, and long winters.
I think it is super interesting to think that the winter up in the Adirondack park is so lonely that they have created an official disorder to describe the depression the people face. I would be interested to find out what else the citizens of the Adirondack park do to occupy themselves during the winter months to prevent the sadness associated with having to stay indoors.
ReplyDeleteComing from a state where it is sunny about 300 days of the year, it's really interesting to learn about SAD. I didn't really know SAD was a thing until last winter. I really enjoy the perspective you took of SAD in the Adirondacks. I thought the winter was long here at Hamilton but I couldn't even imagine living in a place where it's much colder than Hamilton or the fact that the people who live at the Adirondacks do not have the same resources that we have. We keep seeing this reoccurring theme that that people who live in the Adirondacks are people of many skills and it is crazy to think that they are almost self-reliable. I do not even think that I could self-cure my depression or even learn how to deal with it. It is also interesting to point out the medical availability in the Adirondacks. This reminds me of one of the girls from the Adirondack Program who had an internship at a local hospital and how she learned about rural medicine. I wonder if depression affects many people in the Adirondacks and if they seek out help for it. Or if people choose not to go to the doctors over SAD since there are limited resources available.
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