feeling s.a.d.

According to the American Academy of Family Physicians, As many as half a million people in the United States may have winter depression. Another 10% to 20% may experience mild SAD." SAD, as in Seasonal Affective Disorder: depression that ebbs and flows with the seasons.

Given that the population of the U.S. hovers around 300 million, that means 30 to 60 million people are walking around right now with the winter blues - symptoms of depression that aren't life-changing enough to be treated clinically. Their lives continue more or less normally. They go to work and school. They're eating and sleeping okay. They have no interest in giving up on life. But there's a malaise clouding everything until the sunshine and green of spring return.

And yes, okay, maybe I am one of those people.

Thinking about this, I began to wonder what teen fiction out there talks about SAD. The only example I can think of is Brian Mandabach's ...Or Not?, in which the main character is given to depressive episodes year-round but is, readers are told, especially hard-hit in winter. In fact, I'm having trouble thinking of much teen fiction that deals with teen depression, period.

I can think of plenty of books that deal with a teen's grief following the death of a loved one; a depressed or otherwise mentally ill parent; or a teen who commits suicide and/or takes a gun to school and shoots everyone, following prolonged bullying or social ostracization. But what about books in which teen characters face depression on an ongoing basis, but don't commit suicide, don't shoot up their classmates? Is it just me, or is there really not much out there?

According to Teen Depression, about 20% of teens experience a depressive episode, which generally lasts about 8 months. Of those, 20-40% will experience multiple depressive episodes. About 5% of teens are suffering from major (clinical) depression at any one time. There's more statistics, but you get the picture: teen depression is remarkably common.

Meanwhile, only 8 in every 100,000 teens comitted suicide in the year 2000. I hate to say "only", because it's still a sad and frightening number. Suicide is the third leading cause of death among teens - how's that for scary? But it's still clear that the overwhelming majority of teens coping with depression do just that: find ways to cope.

Here are some other books I've come up with about teens with depression or bipolar disorder (which features depressive episodes), that focus on COPING rather than suicide:

• Julie Halpern's novel Get Well Soon focuses on a teen with major depression, inspired by her own experiences. Little Willow has an interesting interview with Halpern about it here.
• Sonya Sones's novel Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy is about a teen's experience with her sister's emerging bipolar disorder (again, inspired by the author's personal experiences).
• Dia Calhoun's novel The Phoenix Dance is a retelling of "The Twelve Dancing Princesses," with a protagonist who copes with bipolar disorder. Calhoun has Bipolar Two Illness herself.

If anyone can think of others, I would love to know about them!