Dr. Kelly Rowan

of a mental health provider who can watch out for those side effects, help you address them and also get the dose just right.

Because light therapy is not a one size fits all.

There's no generic prescription.

Tell me about that.

If we break down the term cognitive behavioral therapy, we have cognitive.

So we focus on thought patterns in CBT.

We actually have people write them down, record their thoughts when they're feeling sad.

And then they bring those data into session.

And we ask a lot of questions like, what's the evidence for that thought?

Is there any other way to see it to

Try to gently reframe some of those negative thoughts so that they're not wreaking as much havoc on mood.

And in seasonal affective disorder, we see a lot of negative thoughts like, I hate winter.

I can't function at all during the winter months.

And we can work on those kinds of thoughts using CBT as well.

And then, of course, there's the B, the behavior and cognitive behavioral therapy.

In winter depression, we see a lot of kind of passive behavior, people ruminating a lot, spending a lot of time on the couch, passively watching television.

So instead of doing that, which we know only feeds the depression, we try to get people to identify things that they can do in the winter that will bring a sense of joy and doing some of those things instead of going into what I call hibernation mode.

Seeing people as a big part of the behavioral side of CBT, getting people engaged with their social networks,

so that they're seeing people and their social activities look more like they do in the summertime than going into this passive hibernation-like state that we know only makes the depression worse.

It would be wonderful if it were that easy.