You may have noticed a little more of a spring in your step lately (pardon the pun), and there's a good reason for that. The sun is rising earlier, setting later, and generally shining more often in recent days, leaving a positive impact on people's mental health.

As we approach the Spring Equinox and the official beginning of a new season, there will be an equal amount of daylight and night for the first time since last September. This has a direct, scientific link to people's mood.

"It's been a proven fact through science for many years that vitamin D and sunshine are very helpful to our mental health," said Envision Counselling and Support Centre's executive director Christa Daku. "I think that spring is always an optimistic time for people, so I'm hopeful that this year, especially coming out of COVID and with the vaccine going to be available to many people... I'm really hopeful our communities will start to feel more optimistic."

That increased sense of optimism is something Daku and others working at Envision are noticing in their clients. It doesn't hurt that, after what was at times a very dark year (literally and figuratively), things in the wider world seem to be trending the right direction.

"People have felt very stuck for quite a while," Daku said. "It has felt like decades, honestly, it felt like time stood still over the past year even though it didn't, and we were very very busy in many ways. I think there's definitely optimism in the air."

The conversation around mental health has only grown in recent years, and Seasonal Affective Disorder (a condition in which people suffer depressive episodes at the same time of year each year, typically in the winter when there's less sunlight) is something people have become more open about. It's been helpful to Envision to have a scientific explanation to give people for why they feel how they do.

"That's something we work on in our programs is developing those coping skills to get through those tougher months," said Daku. "We get out and we exercise a bit more, we get more sunshine, even when we're commuting we get more sunshine, it's just a really good time to look at the future and look forward and try to be optimistic."

Daku added the pandemic is still leaving them with a higher volume of calls than in a typical year, but the sunshine and the rise in mood that comes with it has been helpful.