Whitney Bashaw sits at a table in the Underground, flipping through the pages of her geology book. Studying has become a difficult task for Bashaw. She says her energy level is decreasing and she feels like she is in a rut.

“Things are kind of slow right now and I feel like my mood has done a roundabout since school started,” says Bashaw, Shawnee junior,. “Even fun things like movies or shopping seem kind of boring to me.”

Bashaw says the mood swings she goes through have occurred the past few years and typically come after Halloween and last until late February.

The wintry woes Bashaw and millions of other Americans experience may be symptoms of a mild form of depression known as seasonal affective disorder (SAD).

According to the Mayo Clinic, symptoms of seasonal affective disorder include depression, hopelessness, social withdrawal, weight gain, difficulty concentrating and loss of energy, among others. SAD is a cyclic condition, which means symptoms begin to appear around the same time each year. The Mayo Clinic says that seasonal affective disorder generally begins in young adulthood and that studies show women are diagnosed more often than men, but men have more severe symptoms. You may identify the side effects of the semester’s end as an all-too-common low point of the year, but your holiday ho-hums could easily be the onset, or progression, of seasonal affective disorder.

Norman Rosenthal, a professor in the psychiatry department at Georgetown University and a practicing psychiatrist who works with patients with SAD, says the time to seek assistance is when everything seems to go wrong in your life. His book, Winter Blues, discusses the common misconceptions of seasonal affective disorder and how to turn your abominable winter into a joyful season.

The National Organization for SAD says Rosenthal was the first researcher to look into the condition. He also named it. Rosenthal says in his studies most people don’t acknowledge the condition and take action to treat it. What people believe is an emotional, mental and physical funk is actually more severe than they think. Rosenthal says various environments and family history may be the culprits for most cases of SAD. Living thousands of miles north of the equator or having a SAD-diagnosed relative may not be the only indicator in your depressive mood. There is also evidence that a physiological phenomenon might also play a role in SAD diagnosis.

Jay C. Dunlap, professor and chair of genetics at Dartmouth College, researches and studies the circadian rhythm, which is essentially the biological clock found in all organisms. The 24-hour cycle influences seasonal affective disorder diagnosis, Dunlap says.

The earth’s light-dark cycleand a specific region’s temperature spectrum can affect the normal circadian rhythm of any person. Dunlap adds that a change in the circadian rhythm does not entirely affect a person’s routine and cause seasonal affective disorder, but he does acknowledge a common bond.

“The connection isn’t clear, but the two are definitely related,” he says.

The Mayo Clinic lists multiple ways to treat the condition. In order to fight the changes in your circadian rhythm, you could take sleep aids and antidepressants such as Ambien or Paxil, respectively. Even changing your diet and managing your stress levels can reduce the effects of seasonal affective disorder. If your condition is extremely severe, light therapy and psychotherapy can be the answer. Light therapy is a procedure that uses synthetic light to reproduce natural light that isn’t as abundant during the winter as it is in the summer.

Bashaw recently began a healthy diet and sleep routine in hopes of coping with the effects of her altered mood, although she says sticking to her new regimen is difficult, especially with lurking finals.

“It’s going to be kind of hard,” Bashaw says, “but this is something that I think a lot of people overcome, and hopefully I can, too.”