Bright light therapy, widely understood to be an effective treatment for Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), can also be helpful in treating other types of depression, finds a new meta-analysis published on Oct. 2 in JAMA Psychiatry.
“Major depressive disorder (MDD) is currently the leading cause of functional disability and one of the most critical mental health issues,” write the authors, a group of doctors and medical students in Brazil and Argentina, in the study’s introduction. But the estimated response rate to initial treatment works only about half of the time, they note, eventually requiring alternatives.
