Good Morning!

For most people, getting up in the morning, even if not the happiest moment of their lives, is merely a routine matter. For some others, getting out of bed immediately makes it ten to one against them; awakening brings an emotional hangover that has nothing to do with liquor.*The day ahead seems impossible and even death preferable. Usually, with the routine of washing, dressing and breakfast, the gloom wears off and life seems worth living again.

Is this morning depression something to be depressed about? In a few cases, thinks Manhattan Psychiatrist Jan Ehrenwald, it may be a sign of serious physical disease or the first symptom of melancholia.

Most of the time, Dr. Ehrenwald reported last week in the quarterly American Journal of Psychotherapy, morning depression is just unpleasant. It can occur in people who are mentally and physically healthy. They are victims of "dissociated waking": i.e., they wake up by bits and pieces. Their bodies are awake, but their minds are still asleep. Or, he thinks, their consciences are awake and needling the rest of the still sleepy conscious mind to get up and go to work.

Can anything be done about morning depression in otherwise normal people? Dr. Ehrenwald is not very optimistic. They might, he thinks, arrange their hours so that their heaviest work is done in the evening, when they are at their best. If they take sleeping pills, they should avoid the late-acting kind that take effect when they have become sleepy anyway. Otherwise, since it is impossible to send the morning head back to bed while the body goes to work, the only thing to do is grin & bear it.

* Professional rousers are not always helpful. A gloomy Oxford "scout" (college servant) used to wake his young gentlemen with the invariable remark: "Seven-thirty, sir, and another 'orrible morning."

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