Does the sun improve our happiness and mental wellbeing?

As summer approaches we might start to hear people say things like ‘I’m always happier when its sunny’, some people might even express that their mental health is distinctly better during summer because it’s sunny more frequently. But is there any real truth to these claims? Does the sun improve our mental wellbeing? If so, why?

Written by Bryony Porteous-Sebouhian

Is the sun a mental health improver?

In a recent article on Science Focus , the author describes the scientific evidence around whether or not sunnier days can make us happier people as “equivocal”. In other words, there is almost equal amounts of evidence ‘for’ and ‘against’ the idea that being in the sun can make us happier, making the idea rather open to interpretation and ambiguous.

A 2013 study at the Freie Universit?t Berlin found that a group of people who had been surveyed on a sunny day, and another who’d been surveyed on a cloudy day felt more satisfied and less satisfied with life respectively.

However, another Berlin university, found in an earlier paper that mood was not improved by sunnier days, though respondents to the survey did admit to feeling less tired on sunny days.

If the research evidence is so unclear, why do so many people think sunlight is good for mental health?

Well, in simple scientific terms, it is – but this comes with some caveats. Sunlight, when we are exposed to it in safe ways (using SPF suncream) can be great for our internal systems.

When we’re exposed to sunlight, it encourages our body to produce more vitamin D, which not only lowers our blood pressure, but there is also evidence to suggest that increased vitamin D can help to counteract the symptoms of depression and can also help us to emotionally regulate more effectively.

Sunlight also encourages the production of the neurotransmitter and hormone, serotonin. Often thought of as the ‘happy hormone’, serotonin lifts our mood, helps us to feel calm and also energises us. Without exposure to sunlight we can see levels of both serotonin and vitamin D decrease.

So why are the results in human focused studies so varied and contradictory?

Although the sun might have an affect on the basic biochemical makeup of our internal systems, this doesn’t necessarily mean it will always make us feel better. If life is feeling particularly stressful, overwhelming or a person is really struggling with their mental health – even if we’re just having a bit of a bad day, telling someone to ‘get some sun’ is not going to solve their problems.

In fact, it can have the opposite of the desired effect, and anything that falls into the general realm of ‘mindfulness’ has been criticised for the potential to have these opposite effects at times. A large part of this, is that there is an expectation of the person experiencing mental distress to ‘make themselves better’ when they might be feeling really unwell.

What’s the answer then? Can sunny days be used to boost our mental health?

There is no simple answer, but looking at the results of the second study mentioned above, maybe the key here is to see the sun, and time spent outside in general as a way to ‘boost’ an already existing positive mood.

A lot of the time we only really think about our mental health or interventions to do with our mental health when we are struggling; but maybe this approach is missing something? Instead, if we are aware of the times we are feeling ‘good’, ‘happy’ or more ‘mentally healthy’, utilising sunny days, and their potential for encouraging our bodies to produce more of that good stuff – the vitamin D and serotonin – it could become a preventative tool, rather than a solution when we are already finding managing our mental health hard.