Feeling Low in Summer? Why Depression Doesn't Take a Holiday

Most people have heard of the winter blues. Shorter days, dark mornings, that heavy feeling that creeps in around November.

What far fewer people realise is that low mood can arrive in the middle of summer too.

It even has a name. Summer-pattern seasonal affective disorder, sometimes called reverse SAD. And if you’ve been quietly wondering why you feel flat whilst everyone around you seems to be soaking up the long evenings, you’re not imagining it.

When the sunshine doesn’t lift you

We tend to assume summer is the easy season. Brighter mornings, holidays, a bit more life in the streets. So when your mood drops during the warmest months, it can feel confusing. Even a little shameful.

You might find yourself thinking, what’s wrong with me, everyone else looks happy.

Nothing is wrong with you. Seasonal changes affect mood, and for some people the shift that stings isn’t the darkness of winter. It’s the heat, the disrupted sleep and the pressure of a season that expects you to be having the time of your life.

Research suggests only around one in ten people who experience SAD have the summer version. It’s less common than the winter type, and far less talked about, which is partly why it can leave people feeling so isolated.

The signs can look different

Winter depression often shows up as sleeping more, eating more and wanting to hibernate. The summer pattern tends to go the other way.

Common signs include:

• Trouble sleeping, especially with the bright evenings
• Poor appetite, sometimes with weight loss
• Feeling restless, agitated or on edge
• Anxiety that sits alongside the low mood
• Irritability, a shorter fuse than usual

If a few of those feel familiar and they’ve been showing up around the same time each summer, it’s worth paying attention. A pattern that returns year after year is one of the clearest clues that the season is playing a part.

Why does it happen?

The honest answer is that researchers don’t fully know yet. The theories are reasonable, but they haven’t all been firmly tested.

Long daylight hours seem to matter. In Ireland the summer evenings stay bright until well after ten, and that can quietly nudge your body clock out of rhythm and interfere with melatonin, the hormone that helps you wind down and sleep.

Heat and humidity play a role too. When you’re too warm to sleep properly, your mood takes the hit the next day. Broken sleep and low mood tend to feed each other.

Then there’s the softer stuff that rarely gets mentioned. Summer comes with a certain pressure. Bodies on display, packed social calendars, the cost of holidays, children off school and routines falling apart. For a lot of people the season is less of a holiday and more of a juggling act.

What can actually help

Here’s the encouraging part. Whatever the season, low mood responds to support, and there’s plenty you can try.

Protecting your sleep is a sensible first move. Keep your bedroom cool and dark, blackout blinds genuinely help in the long Irish evenings, and try to keep your wake-up time steady even at weekends.

Gentle structure helps as well. When mood dips, the instinct is to withdraw and cancel things. Behavioural activation, one of the building blocks of cognitive behavioural therapy, works in the opposite direction. It nudges you towards small, doable activities that give a sense of achievement, because doing a little tends to lift you more than waiting to feel better first.

And you don’t have to work it all out alone.

Where therapy comes in

Talking to someone trained can make a real difference when low mood keeps returning. CBT has strong evidence behind it for seasonal depression. One 2024 University of Vermont study found that around three in four people who completed a course of CBT stayed free of depression two years later, which is a genuinely hopeful result for something that so often comes back.

At Mind Healing we don’t rely on one method though. Our counsellors are registered with the APCP, BACP and IACP, and we work through a structured twelve-week integrative framework that draws on CBT, person-centred therapy, psychodynamic work and mindfulness. Some people respond to practical tools for sleep and routine. Others need space to understand what the season stirs up for them. Often it’s a bit of both.

Many people notice their mood becoming steadier once they have somewhere to bring it.

We offer sessions online right across Ireland, and in person in Limerick, so you can get support in whatever way suits your life. If you’re not sure whether therapy is for you, our €40 introductory session is a low-pressure way to talk things through and see how it feels. You can book at offer.mindhealing.online or book.mindhealing.online.

Summer doesn’t have to be the season you just get through. If the warm months have been quietly hard, reaching out is a good place to start.

If you’re struggling right now, you don’t have to wait. You can call Samaritans free on 116 123, or text HELLO to 50808, any time of day or night. In an emergency, ring 999 or 112.