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THURSDAY, Oct. 29 (HealthDay News) -- As daylight hours dwindle, people with seasonal affective disorder (SAD) can often feel the onset of wintertime depression, but a new study suggests one type of remedy may work better than another at banishing the SAD blues.
Cognitive behavioral therapy specially designed to treat people with SAD is more effective at preventing recurrences of depression than either light therapy or a combination of the two, the study found.
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The psychotherapy may also be a time-saver -- potentially welcome news with Daylight Saving Time coming to an end on Nov. 1.
"It's an up-front investment, three hours of therapy a week in total over six weeks, whereas light therapy is 30 minutes a day and not just for six weeks," said study author Kelly Rohan, a psychologist at the University of Vermont. "Light therapy depends on a lot of time and effort, a minimum 30 minutes in front of the fixture every day of the symptomatic months every year. I don't know how many people are willing to do that."
The study was published in a recent issue of the journal Behavior Therapy.
According to Rohan's group, this is the first published data on the long-term effects of different therapies for SAD, which is characterized by mood and energy declines between November and April, when light is in short supply in the northern hemisphere.
The treatment of choice for the disorder has traditionally been light therapy, which spurs remission in about 53 percent of cases during the winter.
Light therapy involves exposure to bright light, typically administered using a "light box" -- a set of fluorescent bulbs or tubes encased in small, portable devices made of plastic or aluminum. A plastic screen covering the bulbs blocks out potentially harmful ultraviolet rays.
But the authors of this study had also developed and tested a group cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) protocol geared to people with SAD.
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