Alaska’s Long Winter Nights Bring to Light Gloomy Effect : Health: An estimated 20% of the state’s residents suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder, a mood illness triggered by light deprivation.

Martha Roderick has never been much of a morning person, and living in Anchorage, where she had to get up one recent Sunday long before the sun finally rose at 9:13, it’s sometimes difficult for her to do much more than snarl.

Here in Alaska--where length of residency is measured in terms of winters rather than years--the long nights that plunge much of the state into darkness for weeks can manipulate moods and alter body clocks.

Alaska winters certainly let Roderick know who is master.

“One winter, I went into complete hibernation,” the 58-year-old tutor said. “My mind stopped accepting information and my body stopped accepting commands. I just wanted to stay in bed all day with the covers over my head, and for a good part of one winter, that’s just what I did.”

In Anchorage, tanning salons and fitness centers get a workout during the long winters, and so does the flight path from Anchorage to Honolulu. Tickets for Hawaii Airlines flights to Honolulu last December had been sold out a year in advance.

“It’s pretty well understood among everyone in this state that you have to go south at least once a year. It’s a good pick-me-up,” said David Pierce, a state planner in Juneau, which is wrapped in gray mists most of the winter.

Anchorage, Alaska’s largest city, gets a daily average of slightly more than 7 hours of daylight in December and about 8.5 hours a day in January. Twilight here lasts well into mid-morning, then sneaks back again in mid-afternoon. In winter, people drive to work in the dark and drive home in the dark.

By Alaska standards, Anchorage has a spotlight shining on it.

In Barrow, the northernmost community in North America, the sun does not rise for 65 days, from dusk Nov. 19 to dawn Jan. 23.

“It bothers most people to some degree,” said John Agee, a meteorological technician with the National Weather Service in that Arctic frontier town. “Not many people dig in here and stay forever. It’s not that kind of place. It doesn’t seem to bother me any, though. I’ve been on shift work for 30 years. It doesn’t matter whether it’s 3 a.m. or 3 p.m. My biological clock sprung years ago.”

Studies suggest that as many as 20% of Alaskans suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder, a mood disorder triggered by light deprivation, according to Dr. Aron Wolf, a psychologist at Langdon Clinic in Anchorage who has treated Martha Roderick for the illness known as SAD.

“It’s like they’ve turned the carburetor down,” he said. “People sleep a lot. They crave carbohydrates and gain weight, and they suffer low- to moderate-grade depression. It isn’t until mid-March that SAD folks begin feeling like their world is coming together again.”

SAD, which is estimated to affect 3% of all Americans, was identified a decade ago and became an officially diagnosed disorder last year.

Doctors aren’t sure exactly what causes the disorder, but some theorize that the absence of light triggers the secretion of a hormone called melatonin, which is thought to work as a sort of tranquilizer.

Wolf said the illness generally affects women more than men, and seems to spare children and American Indians. He estimated that half of those who suffer from SAD in Alaska move here from cities in southern climates such as Dallas, Houston and San Diego.

He has treated Roderick and hundreds of others like her with phototherapy, or simulated sunlight. For an hour every morning, from mid-September until early March, Roderick sits in front of a special light that throws off a brightness comparable to the sun coming through a window at dawn.

Three years ago, Anchorage Telephone Utility installed the full-spectrum lights, which throw off a bluish tint, in a building where 40 operators work. “That’s a high-stress position, and it seems to have changed the mood of the people,” said Bud Murphy, a utility spokesman. “I think it’s working. People seem to like it a lot more.”

Alaska’s harsh environment shapes its character--and, according to some theoreticians, the characters who are drawn to it. The state’s rates of divorce, suicide and alcohol consumption are among the highest in the nation.

“We’re pretty much at the top of the heap for aberrations in general, and things do seem to deteriorate in the winter,” said Jan Campbell, executive director of the Alaska Mental Health Assn. “When we came here in the early ‘60s, it was the end of the road. A lot of people who can’t make it other places come here to start over. There is opportunity here, and the spirit of the individual flourishes in Alaska. People are less willing to conform.”