As if the applications for light therapy couldn’t get more varied, a study has now shown that light therapy has proven bright idea for treating depressed elderly patients.
A new study has shown that bright lights may be just as effective for depressed elderly people as taking antidepressant medication. Scientists leading a Dutch study have found the benefits seem to last even after the treatment was discontinued. The study involved 89 people, aged 60 or older, with a diagnosis of major depression. This group was sent home with a light box and instructed to sit beside it for an hour each morning over a three-week period.
Half the group reported that the light it emitted was bright and blue, while others were subjected to a dim red light. At the conclusion of the period, more of those exposed to the bright light experienced a lifting in their mood, measured using a standard psychiatric questionnaire.
Three weeks later, when the men and women were no longer using the light box, the difference between the two groups was even more pronounced – showing the residual effect of light therapy on mood.
The bright light group also showed lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol and got out of bed earlier than the patients who received dim light.
The study, conducted by psychiatrists and neuroscientists from several Netherlands universities, is the first in the world to include enough patients to draw statistically reliable conclusions.
Bright light has been utilised for people who suffered from the winter depression known as seasonal affective disorder, but study leader Ritsaert Lieverse believes it is significant for depressed elderly people.
’Elderly people expose themselves less frequently to bright environmental light, and might also absorb less light through their retinas,’ Dr Lieverse wrote in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry. ‘They were also more prone to medication side-effects.’
He went on the explain that the beneficial effects might in part be due to the resetting of the body clock, and observed a bigger evening rise in the circadian hormone melatonin among those who received the bright light therapy.
Figures from the National Ageing Research Institute in Melbourne suggest one in 100 elderly people were depressed enough to need treatment from a psychiatrist, while 15 per cent had milder forms of the illness.
Further research will be investigating the comparison of light therapy with antidepressants. If it proved effective, bright light would be considered an attractive and inexpensive method of treatment.
Sounds like it’s time to get out in the sunshine!
