This is the time of year when it gets dark earlier and the skies are gray and it’s raining or snowing or it’s freezing outside or any combination of these.

During and after the holidays many people feel depressed and overwhelmed. Sometimes it’s because they’re lonely and wish they had people to spend the holidays with and sometimes it’s because people are trying to accomplish a lot while they continue to tend to their already busy schedule, trying to buy presents on a budget for everyone they would like to give a gift to or because, in their enthusiasm, they put way too much on their credit cards and now they’re trying to figure out how to get them paid along with the bills.

So there there are factors like weather, holidays, and money that do create stress and sometimes depression. However, there is another type of depression that occurs during winter months. It’s caused by having fewer daylight hours and fewer sunny hours. This condition is referred to as SAD or Seasonal Affective Disorder. I’m going to put a paragraph in this article that I’ve quoted from a Medscape article about this type of depression and also give credit to the person who wrote the article. I can’t put a url here because Medscape is password protected and you wouldn’t be able to get in to read the article. There are various ways to treat SAD. Many people find relief by using light therapy:

“Another psychiatrist was more confident in the power of lights:

I recommend light therapy with a lot of my mood-disordered patients. The light machine must deliver at least 10,000 LUX of light . . . The cheap ones require you to sit very close to the light. With the better ones you can sit 2 to 3 feet away. You should spend 30 minutes a day IN THE MORNING in front of the light. You don’t have to look into the light, but glance at it periodically.”