7 quotes that sum up seasonal affective disorder

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According to the NHS, Seasonal Affective Disorder is:

a type of depression that comes and goes in a seasonal pattern.

NHS, Overview of Seasonal Affective Disorder

Symptoms include:

  • ongoing low mood
  • a loss of pleasure or interest in daily activities
  • irritability
  • feelings of despair, guilt and worthlessness
  • lacking in energy and feeling sleepy during the day
  • sleeping for longer than normal and finding it hard to get up in the morning
  • craving carbohydrates and gaining weight
  • difficulty concentrating
  • decreased sex drive

Here are 7 quotes that sum up SAD.

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How are we using social media?

Roxanne Cohen Silver, PhD:

Research does make it clear that social media is a larger source of misinformation and rumour than we typically get from traditional media. There isn’t anybody who is monitoring and vetting the information for its truthfulness or its veracity. So we need to step back. How are we using social media? Is it for connection, or is it for information gathering?

Purplexed Science: During the early stages of the pandemic, I admittedly relied heavily on Twitter updates. Not necessarily other people’s tweets, but the curated headlines and conversations Twitter itself would group together. The public’s willingness to be informed is directly linked to how the media has chosen to inform.

I found myself deleting several news notifications I’d set up because it was nothing but COVID-19, and I think that can do two things.

Dilute the information, or expose people to more misinformation. Human beings tend to rationalise what they cannot understand and this pandemic has been no different.

People are using social media for connection, but that also comes with information gathering. People feel a need to share what they’ve learnt with others. Often without stopping to fact check, after all, it’s easier to click a button than it is to input a search term into Google and spend half an hour reading up on a topic you may not necessarily understand.

One solution may be integrating a fact checking service within all social media platforms, or a service that allows people to quickly input information and returns them with a concise and clear explanation. Implementing such a service would be costly and time-consuming, so the buck stops with social media and news outlets. They should be held accountable for what is posted and do their due diligence before misinformation is allowed to spread.

It’s still going to be a difficult winter

It is still going to be a very difficult winter. Distributing millions of vaccines will take months, so there will be a period where some people have natural immunity and others have vaccine immunity, while others remain vulnerable. Moreover, we don’t know how long vaccine immunity will last. While it would be great to get a vaccine on a Monday and celebrate your newfound immunity at a party on Tuesday, that’s not how it works. Those who are lucky to get a vaccine early in the process owe it to their communities to continue wearing masks and distancing until new cases and hospitalizations subside to near zero.”

—Dave O’Connor, PhD, University of Wisconsin Medical Foundation Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Wisconsin-Madison

4 COVID-19 Expert Quotes

Coronavirus (or COVID-19) has taken the world by storm, and after a frenzied period at the beginning of the year, many countries are seeing a rise in the number of cases. Despite the efforts from scientists and researchers across the globe, there is still no vaccine for the virus. This means society is still relying on social distancing and hygiene measures to limit the spread of the virus.

With the general public unused to this kind of phenomenon, it’s down to the experts to keep us up to date and informed.

Here are 4 Expert COVID-19 quotes… Continue reading