Why does winter feel heavier for some of us?
Low energy, muted emotions, social withdrawal—often brushed aside as “just winter blues”—have long been part of our cultural vocabulary. Long before medicine gave it a name, culture and music spoke of this feeling as “the blues.”
In this piece, I explore how those cultural expressions connect to what we now recognise as Seasonal Affective Diso⁶rder (SAD….why it happens, how it’s often misunderstood, and what actually helps. From blues music to modern psychiatry, the article looks at winter blues not as weakness but as a pattern worth understanding.
Shivani Pandey 