Light treatment for seasonal Winter depression in African-American vs Caucasian outpatients

Abstract

This is the first study of light treatment in African-Americans, continuing our previous work reporting a similar frequency but a lower awareness of SAD and its treatment in African-Americans. Similar rates of adherence, symptomatic improvement and treatment response suggest that light treatment is a feasible, acceptable, and beneficial treatment for SAD in African-American patients. These results should lead to intensifying education initiatives to increase awareness of SAD and its treatment in African-American communities to increased SAD treatment engagement. In African-American vs Caucasian SAD patients a remission gap was identified, as reported before with antidepressant medications for non-seasonal depression, demanding sustained efforts to investigate and then address its causes.

Natural Sleep and Its Seasonal Variations in Three Pre-industrial Societies

“…It also may explain the greater effectiveness of morning light [31, 32] in the reversal of depression, since such treatments tend to restore the evolved pattern of human exposure to light.…”

EGb761 attenuates depressive-like behaviours induced by long-term light deprivation in C57BL/6J mice through inhibition of NF-κB-IL-6 signalling pathway

“…Some species present physiological and behavioural changes in response to seasonal changes in day length [23]. Although human beings are less affected by the changes in day length than the other species, some people still have seasonal affective disorder characterised by major depression episodes in the autumn and winter [24–26].…”