Dreading a dark winter lockdown? Think like a Norwegian (Guardian) {Psychology of isolation}
Studies show people living in the Arctic Circle are armed with a mindset that helps combat the long ‘polar night’. It might come in handy for us all…
When Kari Leibowitz first arrived in the Norwegian city of Tromsø, she was both intrigued by, and fearful of, the approaching winter. Two hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle, the city does not see the sun from mid-November to mid-January. It was a far cry from the state of New Jersey, where she had grown up, or Stanford, California, where she had been studying before travelling to Norway.
As a health psychologist, Leibowitz’s aim was to understand the ways that Tromsø’s citizens coped with the long “polar night”. In many countries, the short days of winter are thought to cause lethargy and low mood, resulting in “seasonal affective disorder” (SAD). This is sometimes assumed to have a purely biological basis – levels of mood-regulating neurotransmitters such as serotonin are generally lower in winter than in summer, and last week a study suggested that people with more neurotic personalities are particularly susceptible to low winter moods. SAD is often treated using standard antidepressant drugs, as well as psychotherapies.
During the darkest periods of the polar night, Tromsø only receives two to three hours of indirect sunlight, shining into the sky from below the horizon. Yet its inhabitants do not show the kind of wintertime depression you might expect of a city cast in darkness. One study by May Trude Johnsen at the University of Tromsø found that the citizens’ wellbeing barely changed across the year. Their sleep was a bit more disturbed without the daily rhythm of the rising and setting sun, but they reported no increase in mental distress during the winter.
So what’s their secret? Of the many potential explanations, Leibowitz’s work suggests that one vital component may be a particular “mindset” that arms the citizens against the stresses of the long polar night.
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more: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/sep/26/dreading-a-dark-winter-lockdown-think-like-a-norwegian
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