Winter blues? A practical guide to getting more light in your life

April is allegedly the cruelest month, but October and November could give it a run for its money. In the northern hemisphere, the nights are noticeably drawing in, especially now the clocks have gone back, and sunset is an hour earlier. Every day, it gets darker two minutes more prior than it did the day before. And, while there are compensations-- hello moon! Hello, stars! Hello, most of all, Orion the Hunter, back in our northern skies after long months below the horizon-- many of us cannot be consoled. As one of his patients told the US psychiatrist Norman Rosenthal: "I didn't realize how quickly we hemorrhage light."

"I love that expression 'the hemorrhaging of light,'" Rosenthal says. According to Rosenthal, who has spent more than 30 years studying the effects of seasonal changes on mood, about one in five Americans suffer some "winter blues." When we speak, it is 8.30 am in his hometown of Bethesda, Maryland, and he is sitting in front of a light designed to reduce the symptoms.

Things are even worse in the UK, especially after the kind of long, hot summer that we have just enjoyed. The further north you go, the gloomier it gets. In the winter, there are parts of northern Scotland that get an average of only 64 minutes of sunlight a day, according to the Met Office.

You can start by making at least one room in your home as bright as possible, by adding artificial light, opening curtains, rolling up blinds, cleaning your windows and trimming any plants that obscure them. Even if it is raining, blowing a gale or snowing, get outdoors as much as possible. Even if you seem to go to work when it's dark and also go home when it's dark, get out in the lunch hour.

Even-- especially-- if you don't think of yourself as a winter person, it is worth investing in warm clothes so the weather can't keep you cooped up. While you are out, the sunlight will encourage your body to produce vitamin D. Although Norton says there is only "limited evidence" for vitamin D improving mood, "there is no doubt that many of us are deficient in the winter months."