Join Mike, Morgn, and Melissa as they continue their conversation exploring the intricate relationship between mental health and the holiday season. Emphasizing the challenges posed by seasonal affective disorder and the impact of festive environments on emotional well-being. the convergence of holiday stressors, which include familial interactions, financial pressures, and the pervasive influence of substance use during this time, can all notably add up.

Mentioned This Episode:

Website: Health Partners (Dealing with Depression During the Holidays)

Website: National Library of Medicine (Research on Seasonal Affective Disorder & SAD Lamps)

Website: Healthline (Vitamin D2 vs. D3: What’s the Difference?)

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If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. 988 Website

Mike and Morgan welcome questions and comments Email: A PsychoDelicous Conversation

Related Podcast: Mike & Morgan on Behind the Connection

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Welcome to A PsychoDelicious Conversation on mental health issues and trends from two local mental health professionals in the greater Lansing area. I'm Michael Stratton, lmsw.

And I'm Morgan Bowen, dnp, pmhnp. And we're here to provide you with a deep dive into the human experience of consciousness and beyond. Our aim is to be educational and entertaining.

So just kick back and open your ears and your minds.

Hey, I'm Mike Stratton.

And I'm Morgan Bowen.

And I'm Melissa Black.

I'm just gonna say I'm Daedalian this time and that way you don't have to come back and reintroduce.

Hi, Daedalian.

Hi. Good afternoon, Dalian.

Happy holidays.

Happy holidays to you guys too.

Yeah.

Well, in the first part of our show, we talked about the, you know, different aspects of holidays and stress.

And there are some other areas that we want to talk about during this part of the show, and that would be the time change and just the period of the solstice when everything gets dark. And also some stuff about substance use and the holidays and maybe touch on even financial issues surrounding the holidays.

We really covered a lot of the emotional stuff in the first half, I thought.

Yes. Through the guise of our own experiences as. Yeah. Says individuals in the holiday season.

Do you think. Yeah. Melissa, do you think. What do you think about seasonal affective disorder?

Oh, I think it's rampant.

I guess what I do know is in Michigan, even if you're outside all day every day in the summer, in the, you know, all the seasons, there's not enough vitamin D for you to absorb. So, I mean, even someone who does that is going to be deficient. Each one of our cells needs vitamin D to do any of its basic functions.

So I feel like we start out with that deficiency. We know that is related to depression. Oh. And it's gonna make everything else worse as well.

So one of the things I always recommend is if someone doesn't have a contraindication, we hit fall. Let's maybe think about increasing your vitamin D supplementally.

Do you think everybody should take a vitamin D supplement in Michigan?

I do. Unless they have hypercalcemia or there was something. Sure.

As a contraindication.

Yeah.

And being a little nerdy, you want to talk about what vitamin D, how it's synthesized in the body with sunlight versus taking it as a supplement.

And I would also say an elaboration onto the different types of vitamin D, because that's confusing for anybody like me who really doesn't know much about it.

Yes, we can talk about it.

It's not a complex. I was gonna say. I don't know if I have that depth of know at the tip of my tongue.

Sure. Yeah. Well, so your body needs vitamin D. It's one of the vitamins that is used for a lot of different processes.

It is associated with mood and depression, and there's definitely an association that has been established through various research studies. There is some controversy about how important it is. But your body synthesizes vitamin D but needs sunlight to be able to do that.

And it also comes through dietary places. So lots of different things have vitamin D in them.

So left to its own devices, the body uses those food sources and then also sunlight for vitamin D synthesis. But in our lovely state of Michigan, we spend time without the sun. You know, just winter, but it's also gray cloudy.

So that's when you're just not getting the. The level of sunlight to be able to synthesize.

I'll talk to clients to describe the Michigan skies in November. But the difference between sadness and depression. You know, sadness is something like the clouds roll in one day, even for a couple of hours.

But depression is like the skies of Michigan in November where it's just this gray skull cap that comes over the land and it's undifferentiated. You know, just this mood that's always there. But vitamin D, are there any other supplements that you recommend?

I always ch. Check, folks. B vitamins and like their iron, you know, anemia. Again, all of those are also like we normally would find them in our diet.

But with soil not having necessarily the same nutrients that it used to, we don't. There's not actually enough content in most of the food that we eat, like naturally, unless it's supplemented.

Like our grains are supplemented milk, dairy products. Exactly. So but you'll get enough from those supplemented products. But, you know, oh, I grew this spinach. And spinach is, you know, high in iron.

Well, the Michigan soil doesn't.

You know, that's interesting. I actually haven't, you know, many nutrients.

In it because we of over farming. I mean, I could babylon, which I am stopping myself.

But I mean, one of your areas of interest is food sources. And there's a word for it now that we talk about. Nutri.

New nutritional psychiatry. Yes, yes, very big into that. So the other thing is probiotics. So we have more serotonin receptors in our gut than we do in our brain.

What?

So gut health, this is new for me. Like, you know, our vagus nerve is right in between, you know, the brain and the gut. There are more neurons in the gut. I mean, it's just fascinating.

So.

So if we're paying attention to our gut health, we are also paying attention to our mental health. So there are studies that show that taking probiotics not only will help symptoms, but will help your medicines work better as well. So.

And you can get it from yogurt kombucha.

Oh, good.

You can do like the fermented foods too, if it's like contraindicated to take probiotic supplement.

I do eat yogurt every day.

There you go.

Yeah, so that helps. That's a good thing. I noticed in my own practice, I think from November through February, that's where I see a lot more depression.

People are kind of on their last nerve where they're waiting for spring to come and it just takes so long. And I feel this relief myself.

Both after Christmas I notice a relief, but it's still so dark and mid January where you start to notice, oh, I'm starting to notice the day is getting a little bit longer, just a tiny bit longer. There's some kind of hope there.

The hope comes in March, you know, and then there's inevitably another snowfall and then the hope is dashed.

Do any of you have, like, insights as far as the effectiveness of satellites go or not?

Oh, absolutely. For some people, I mean, they don't work, you know, for everybody.

But going back to kind of the initial idea of the relationship between sunlight and depression, some people have seasonal affective disorder. They, in the summertimes, don't really struggle with mood issues, but things get harder for them in the winter.

And then I would say most folks who have depression in Michigan, there's some type of seasonal component. It can get worse, or at least the chance of it getting worse in the winter is.

I don't want to say much, but it's higher for an episode, for like a mood episode, depressive episode. So I had talked to folks about sad lamps and sad lamps have come a long way. Way in this world.

Indeed.

My dad is a psychiatrist in the 90s. Well, he was a psychiatrist starting in the 70s, but in the 90s, I think.

I don't know if that's when sad lamps came out, but we had a family friend who is a vendor of sad lamps. And so it wasn't like you could just come across them every day. You had to get them from someplace. And they were usually.

They were large and kind of clinical looking and really sort of seemed like a big deal. Now you can get them on Amazon. Amazon for, you know, 30 bucks. 30 bucks? Yeah.

Oh, really?

It's about the type of light and then the brightness of the light.

Can you overdose on those?

You can, you can, yeah.

There's a. There was an episode of Northern Exposure from years and years ago.

These people that lived in Exposure.

Yeah, it was a great show. And one of the characters was sitting in front of the lamp all the time and it made him manic.

Yeah, no, with bipolar folks. Yeah. So with my bipolar patients, at least, like with my training, it was like shorter time periods.

Not in direct line of sight, you know, off in the periphery. And be really cautious with any increase in energy that is over the top.

Yeah. And that's very similar where what I talk to my folks about. And now they're smaller.

So if you have a desk or like the dining room table, because a lot of people do it once a day in the morning. Some people do it twice a day, but yeah, usually start 15 minutes and then maybe increase, you know, if you're just starting.

I think I have to look back. Unfortunately, that's not at the tip of my tongue, but. And maybe an hour, twice a day is kind of max sort of range, I would say for sure. Yeah.

Do you really need to do it on a daily basis, though, to get the effects out of it?

So people that do respond well to it notice, and so they are pretty consistent about it. So it's okay to do it that amount and to have consistency is a good thing, but it's also not always totally possible.

Depending on what your schedule is like.

It'S not going to hurt to break it up, but there are better results if you do it consistently.

Okay. One thing that impacts this time of year is that people start to go inside, and when you move your body, you feel better. You just feel better.

And so a lot of times people are less active and need to find a way to, you know, how do I offset that? Do I join a gym? Do I do something at home that I can start to get my heart rate up again?

So that's a really good point. And also with the holidays and overeating and indulging, whether that be food or booze or segue. This is a segue. Yes. To our.

Our next topic, which is substance use in the holidays. Yeah, yeah.

Pretty major. I remember watching these. Yeah. I remember watching movies and there were always the drinks, the punches.

Like, I didn't see that in my family until I was much older, but it was such this, like, oh, to Be festive. One must have the alcoholic punch.

And what is in that punch? Have you ever had that punch? I know exactly what you're talking about. But what is that punch?

Rum. Rum punch. Right.

Are we talking about like eggnog?

Because eggnog. That's true. I was thinking like more like the red, like, like I want to say wassail. Yeah. There's a certain type of Trader Joe's. This. Yes.

There's like a spiced punch that's like I don't even know what's in it, but. Right. It's red.

I am not privy to your punch.

Well, you know, you kind of hear these things in like caroling and oh, we came in for punch and you know, I mean that was. I never experienced that and I never gave much thought. Yeah, no, my experience was. Isn't the day before Thanksgiving like Wednesday.

Biggest bar day of the year?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I used to work in a bar and it got busy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you know, for me a lot of my drinking was, you know, student days and then through my 20s. So it was definitely a lot of wassling.

There was wasling. Wassling was happening. So I think there's going out and participating in the revelry of the season.

And then also there's the home based drinking which maybe is a bit more. Well, it's less public and perhaps problematic for certain families or persons.

Yeah, I think a lot of people that are trying to deal with some kind of stress, if there's any kind of stress in the family or conflictual relationships, sometimes they try to use alcohol is a way to get through it, you know, quote unquote, self medicating, self medication for people who might be depressed or who might be anxious and they're going through this period of time where they might not feel really happy. But the expectation is, hey, this is a celebration, we should do this.

And people have time off, you know, if they work and everybody's spending time together or supposed to be spending spending time together in a family.

So maybe folks who are drinking or using substances more privately or you know, in an addictive or alcoholic way that maybe their thinking is hidden is now, you know, much more in like a communal place and they can do it.

In a more accepted space.

Yeah, yeah. And the. Just the interactions of the family, kids, spousal in laws, other people are coming.

So I think for families who there is some level of substance use happening that's a source of anxiety for the folks who are not the person with the use disorder. And so what is that going to look like? And how do I manage this?

I don't know the numbers. I wonder if the numbers of people who go to rehab goes up around the holidays or just after the holidays, maybe.

Well, that, you know, New Year's resolution, right?

Like, oh, yeah, there's a New Year's resolution thing that happens.

I know quite a few people that got sober on New Year's, like, big.

Hurrah over the holidays. So I'm gonna be really excessive during this time.

Usually more depressed and at least working inpatient when we did, I would definitely notice a concentrated amount of folks who are coming in to get inpatient care or detox care, and they would end up coming to the psych unit for whatever reason, like, around the holidays.

I just had a flashback to when we were working together. Weren't you part of the organization of getting gift stuff for our patients? For the patients that were on my favorite adult. That was like your thing.

That was really cool. Melissa, I want to give you a shout out for that.

I did a quick search on the Web, and, you know, it's the web, so, you know, it's true.

100%.

And it says, yes, the rate of people entering rehab often increases. Increases after the holidays, particularly in January.

All right, that makes sense.

During the holiday season, relapse rates are higher due to increased stress triggers like social gatherings and alcohol. Financial strain. Well, everything we're talking about. And seasonal depression.

Yeah, there we go. There we go.

I think we should also consider food indulgence, though.

You know, for folks who struggle with food addiction or just a problematic relationship with food, exposure to food, different types of food, being around food is a. I mean, that's a huge thing in the holiday.

And if you're someone who has a complicated relationship with food and maybe you have some sort of restriction or some sort of plan that you try to live by, which, again, likely is not helpful. But it's what you're doing. It's your routine.

And then you're faced with all of this indulgence and the amount of shame that goes into that I think is very similar to that which would be, like, with alcohol or something like that. But you're okay, well, I'm going to give myself a pass for the holidays. I'm going to flood myself with sugar, whether it's from alcohol or food.

That's me.

And. And then I'm going to crash. And if I was depressed before, I'm more depressed now.

It could be any kind of binging behavior, you know, so it could be food, it could be alcohol, it could be spending, it could be all kinds of things. But there's this expectation of like, this is what the holidays are supposed to be like.

And then whatever defense mechanisms you're using kind of get amped up at that time of year. I think suicides spike a little bit over the holidays as well. So we should always mention 988 as a resource to call.

If folks are having suicidal thoughts, even not even a plan, but just the thoughts of it, you know, give them a call and talk to someone about it. Because I always think that once you talk about it, it just helps. I say some things grow well in the dark.

And if you keep it as a secret, that's not a good thing.

The more we talk about it and normalize talking about it, I feel like the more helpful that can be to.

Everybody, which speaks to the isolation that can occur on the holidays.

And that's what a lot of patients and just people will talk about is just mental health being affected by a sense of loneliness that is amplified over the holidays. And so isolation, loneliness and suicidal ideation is not a good combination, particularly when there's alcohol or drugs or other things involved.

Yes. Kind of cuts the cord to the frontal lobe, cuts the cord to our judgment center. Makes us more likely to act on impulses that we may never act on.

Yeah.

Divorce.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Three out of four.

Yes.

Yes.

Moving to a different topic. Another aspect of the holidays is people of families come together with a wide variety of worldviews and family. So there can be.

Especially music, there can be some ted's. What are your guys thoughts about topics of dialogue?

No politics.

No politics, absolutely. Yeah. No.

Do you make. I mean, if you did have 28 people over at your house for Thanksgiving, would you sort of talk to people about it beforehand or just kind of let the.

Well in.

Let the situation percolate?

Since you mentioned a specific number, which I had mentioned in the previous, I'll answer this first. None of the people that we've invited would be on the other side, so to speak. And I think that's a result of what has kind of occurred.

You know, I think people have found their own silos of interaction, so to speak.

Are these people like just mainly friends?

This is like, what's my line? Almost all of them are family.

Oh, really?

There are a few friends. A few friends. Okay. Okay.

Well, see, that's interesting because I haven't found families typically to be across the board when it comes to politics, even in my family. And My family's pretty cohesive. We've got a couple of descenders, shall we say? From my viewpoint. Yeah, outliers.

That's a good way to put it.

From my personal viewpoint. And my viewpoint typically aligns with the rest of my family.

Yeah, yeah, well, and we're not being specific, so that's good. Or is it?

I would like never invite 28 people over. I think my head would explode. But if I did and it.

I wasn't sure if everyone was cohesive, I would probably make some comment on the invite of like, hey, like it's.

An interesting thing to talk because I'm thinking of all sorts of things.

But I have a client who I did ask, you know, talk to them about Thanksgiving and they had been invited to a family members and they're not going to go because they don't agree with the family members view. And so it is something that they had done throughout the past and has really changed the, the way that they experience the holidays because of it.

And the other thing I was thinking with dietary restrictions, if somebody does have dietary things then dialoguing with the host or kind of understanding what is happening with the food, sometimes that can be a tense situation for people.

I always bring my own food.

Yeah, it can be a flash really. It can be a flash point for sure.

I mean like beyond what you would bring in like a dish to pass kind of a thing.

No. So like I'm gluten free, sensitive, I'm lactose intolerant, I can't eat soy. It's really annoying.

So this is what I recommend for you.

Bring your own food.

Yes, but that's, you know, there was never anything for me to eat. But I also didn't want to be like a burden of any kind. Like I would never expect someone to make like allergy friendly food.

It's understandable.

But not all families are like that.

There are some folks who are very dismissive.

I think of, you know, these types of things and you know, in my day we all just say, well, like the guise of liberal versus conservative or you know, dynamic ideological interplay can occur in all sorts of conversations that you're maybe not expecting. So yeah, it's just, it's a very, it can be a very tense, tense scenario. So you just don't talk about it.

Right.

I don't drink, so when I go to a party I bring my own Pellegrino.

And I think that's the whole thing is, you know, know yourself, know what you can tolerate, what you can't Tolerate know who you're going to hang out with.

If there was a family that was very, very politically active and that was on the opposite side that invited me, I'd probably say, let's get together for coffee. You know, we're going to do something different. That.

Why subject yourself to something that if you think is going to be really charged in a certain way, you don't want to.

This is another point I wanted. So a lot of clients I talk to are like, oh, it's awful. I'm so stressed. I got to go to my family's house. I'm so. No, you don't.

You don't.

Yes, I do. They're going to be banned if I don't go. Who cares? Who cares? I've seen this scenario too, where somebody.

Gets shamed even though they're trying to do exactly what you say.

It's true.

And I think that's unfortunate.

You know, it's.

If they don't feel like that's a confrontation they want to deal with, they shouldn't have to.

Exactly.

And I want to make a public service announcement. All of the 28 people. You don't have to come. You don't. You really do do not have to come.

But don't tell Gathy I said but. You can say no on the holidays. No is a complete answer. I mean, with families, it's hard.

It does can certainly come with consequences, but you're in charge of your mental health, and if it's not a good idea for you to go, don't go.

Makes sense 100% of the time.

A psycho Delicious conversation is meant for educational and entertainment purposes only. It is no substitute for therapy and should not be treated as such.

If you feel a need for real therapy, you should consult your local provider, Google Therapy, or therapists in your area. Check with Community mental Health or a suicide hotline if you are feeling suicidal.

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