Podcast: Light therapy for prevention of winter depression

Many people experience the " winter blues " , but some suffer from something more serious, seasonal affective disorder, which has a major impact on their quality of life. Light therapy is one of the interventions that is used to try to prevent it and a team of researchers from Austria and the USA published the update of their Cochrane Review in March 2019. Lead author, Barbara Nussbaumer, from the Danube University Krems in Austria, summarises the findings in this podcast." Seasonal affective disorder, which is also known as winter depression, is a seasonal pattern of recurrent major depressive episodes. These usually occur during fall or winter and stop in the spring. One especially harmful feature is the high risk of recurrence and persistence, such that two-thirds of those diagnosed with it experience this type of depression every year. However, the predictable seasonal aspect provides promising opportunities for prevention and we are working on a series of four reviews of interventions that might help. The review that will be focussed on for the next few minutes, examines the effects of light therapy, a well-established non-pharmacological intervention used to treat acute episodes of seasonal affective disorder, which exposes people to artificial light. However, very little is known about its use for preventing winter depression.Modes of delivery and form of light vary, and we wanted to investigate whether any form of light therapy reduces the risk of new depressive episo...
Source: Cochrane News and Events - Category: Information Technology Authors: Source Type: news