New Treatment Options for Winter Depression

Do you suffer from winter depression? Some people call it ‘cabin fever’. You know; you have no energy, you don’t want to do anything, you pretty much hate the world and everyone in it.

Traditional therapy for winter depression, known as Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD, is to sit next to a bright light box for 30 minutes at breakfast. But researchers were curious about the effectiveness of two other types of treatment, dawn simulation and negative air ionization.

In a study at Columbia University in New York and published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, randomly assigned 99 adults with SAD to one of five treatments: Dawn simulation equivalent to May in northern temperate latitudes; a brief dawn “pulse”; bright light after waking; high flow rate negative air ionization; or low flow rate ionization.

Full dawn simulation, high negative air ionization, and bright light therapy proved roughly equal in terms of improvement in symptoms of SAD of about 50% improvement for each. By contrast, improvement was seen in just 23 percent of those who got low ionization and in 43 percent of subjects in the sunrise pulse group.

Although the sunrise pulse treatment was “therapeutically active” in some patients, it led to the persistence, emergence and exacerbation of depressive symptoms, making it an “unfavorable option,” researchers reported.

The conclusion was that while morning bright light therapy will remain the first-line therapy for many people, dawn simulation and negative air ionization may also be considered an option.

If you think you may suffer from winter depression, complete this Personalized Inventory for Depression and SAD survey, a free and confidential online self-assessment questionnaire posted on the nonprofit website of the Center for Environmental Therapeutics, http://www.cet.org/. The site also includes more detailed description of light and ion therapy.