The Efficacy of Light Therapy in the Treatment of Mood Disorders: A Review and Meta-Analysis of the Evidence

Golden, Robert N.; Gaynes, Bradley N.; Ekstrom, R. David; Hamer, Robert M.; Jacobsen, Frederick M.; Suppes, Trisha; Wisner, Katherine L.; Nemeroff, Charles B.

doi:10.1176/appi.ajp.162.4.656

Cited by 744 publications

(478 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…Light also has positive effects on mood. A recent meta-analysis of randomized controlled studies concluded that light treatment for depression is efficacious with effect sizes equivalent to those in pharmacotherapy trials (Golden et al, 2005).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pain in its environmental context: Implications for designing environments to enhance pain control

Malenbaum

Keefe

Williams

et al. 2008

Pain

136

102

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There has recently been heightened recognition that environmental factors can influence pain. Clinicians involved in delivering multidisciplinary pain programs often structure the social environment of their treatment settings to help promote adaptive responses to pain. Recent theories of pain (e.g. Craig, 2003, Melzack, 1999, Fields & Basbaum, 1999 highlight the role that sensory stimuli from the environment can play in influencing the pain experience.Despite the awareness if the environment's influence on pain, patients with pain continue to be treated in settings that are devoid of distracting stimuli. The typical treatment room is painted white, lacking decoration, sparsely furnished, and windowless. Patient's auditory stimuli may range from the noise generated by overhead lighting to urgent, loud paging requests, to sounds of other patients suffering. The visual and sensory settings in which we usually treat pain patients probably do little to relieve pain and may exacerbate pain. This paper considers the influence of environmental stimuli including light, nature scenes and sounds, and video and virtual reality (VR) stimuli on pain and examines the implications for designing pain treatment environments to enhance pain control. Literature Review LightLight is an integral part of any building and can vary according to time of day, location of the structure, window number and style, and numerous other structural and environmental elements. Light influences people in the building and available evidence suggests that exposure to light has implications for pain experiences. Walch et al. (2005) recently conducted a prospective study testing the effects of exposure to sunlight on pain medication in 89 patients who had undergone spine surgery. Patients were randomly assigned to a bright or dim room in the hospital. Bright rooms were exposed to 46% more natural light than dim rooms. Patients in the bright rooms required 22% less opioidequivalent analgesic medications which resulted in 21% decrease in medication costs. Bright room patients reported significantly greater decreases in stress and marginally significant decreases in pain. The fact that recovering in a room with more natural light lowered medication intake is noteworthy, particularly since lower medication intake is associated with fewer side effects and lower costs.Exposure to light may enhance recovery from painful medical conditions. Beauchemin and Hays (1998) conducted a retrospective study that examined the impact of natural light exposure Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pain in its environmental context: Implications for designing environments to enhance pain control

Malenbaum

Keefe

Williams

et al. 2008

Pain

136

102

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…In the realm of mental health, numerous theories behind seasonal depression have been studied, including exposure to light [13], phase-shift in internal clocks [14], and weather [15], with seasonal affective disorder being a well known phenomenon at high latitudes [16], inducing various levels of depression in the winter months.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seasonal Fluctuations in Collective Mood Revealed by Wikipedia Searches and Twitter Posts

Dzogang

Lansdall-Welfare

Cristianini

2016

2016 IEEE 16th International Conference on Data Mining Workshops (ICDMW)

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“…Current European legislation states that pigs must be kept at a minimum light intensity of 40 lux for 8 h/day (Council Directive 2001/93/EC), and although this level of illumination is not aversive to pigs (Taylor et al, 2006), their commercial performance in this environment relative to more illuminated conditions has not been studied. The pineal gland represents a link between the endocrine system of animals and ambient light (Reiter, 1991), and in humans, light intensity during the photoperiod is known to be associated with a number of psychological and physical health parameters (Piccoli et al, 1991;Partonen and Lonnqvist, 2000;Golden et al, 2005). Therefore, although little is known about the influence of low light (LL) intensity on growing pigs, it is possible that the dim environment in which many are reared has a deleterious impact on their well-being.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of chronic environmental stressors on growing pigs, Sus scrofa (Part 1): stress physiology, production and play behaviour

O’Connor

Parker

McLeman

et al. 2010

Animal

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Commercially farmed animals are frequently housed in conditions that impose a number of concurrent environmental stressors. For pigs housed indoors, elevated levels of mechanical noise, atmospheric ammonia and low light intensities are commonplace. This experiment examined the effects on growing pigs of chronic exposure to combinations of commercially relevant levels of these potential stressors. Four-week-old hybrid female pigs (n 5 224) were housed under experimentally manipulated conditions of nominally either ,5 or 20 ppm atmospheric concentration of ammonia (24 h), a light intensity of 40 lux or 200 lux (12 h) and mechanical noise at either <60 or 80 dB(A) (24 h) for 15 weeks in a fully factorial arrangement (2 3 ) of treatments. The response of pigs to these environmental factors was assessed using a suite of physiological, production and behavioural measures. These included indicators of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis activation such as salivary cortisol and adrenal morphometry, as well as body weight, food conversion efficiency and general health scores. Play behaviour was recorded as it is thought to be inversely related to stress. Chronic exposure to ammonia produced the strongest effect, shown by lower concentrations of salivary cortisol and larger adrenal cortices in the pigs reared under 20 ppm ammonia, which may have been indicative of a period of HPA activation leading to a downregulation of cortisol production. The pigs in the ammoniated rooms also performed less play behaviour than pigs in non-ammoniated rooms. There was evidence for an interaction between high noise and ammonia on the health scores of pigs and for brighter light to ameliorate the effect of ammonia on salivary cortisol. However, there was no measurable impact of these potential stressors on the productivity of the pigs or any of the other physiological parameters measured. We conclude that there should be little concern in terms of performance about the physical stressors tested here, within current European Union legal limits. However, 20 ppm ammonia may have had an adverse influence on the well-being of growing pigs. In this study, all other aspects of the pigs' husbandry were optimal; therefore, it is possible that under less favourable conditions, more pronounced effects of ammonia, noise and dim light would be observed.

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The Efficacy of Light Therapy in the Treatment of Mood Disorders: A Review and Meta-Analysis of the Evidence

Cited by 744 publications

References 35 publications

Pain in its environmental context: Implications for designing environments to enhance pain control

Pain in its environmental context: Implications for designing environments to enhance pain control

Seasonal Fluctuations in Collective Mood Revealed by Wikipedia Searches and Twitter Posts

The impact of chronic environmental stressors on growing pigs, Sus scrofa (Part 1): stress physiology, production and play behaviour

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