United States: According to a report by the CDC published early last year stating that about one in five adults in the US have been diagnosed with depression.
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Physicians often recommend antidepressants but say that those meds’ side effects are various and include dreadful skin conditions and ’emotional blunting,” under which the so-called antidepressants don’t only dampen the sufferer’s symptoms but also the entirety of the human emotions, including happiness.
However, scholars are suggesting that a natural cure for this condition could be as simple as flipping a switch.
What are experts suggesting?
There is ample evidence that the availability of light facilitates changes in human behavior, mood, and cognition, the New York Post reported.
One study completed in the past year that shows this was a bright light therapy (BLT), which concluded that there was 40 percent remission of non-seasonal major depression.
Encouraged by the results of the bright light therapy seen in the National Institute of Health study, which showed that patients with seasonal affective disorder (SAD) who underwent exposure for four or more weeks achieved recovery from symptoms, investigators wanted to examine whether the same light therapy could help patients with non-seasonal depressive disorder.
Available from JAMA Psychiatry, the study involved 858 patients diagnosed with depressive disorders.
Study details
Those patients were advised to sit in front of a Fluorescent light box with bright white light at 10,000 lux minimum for 30 minutes per day.
The research team also noticed that those patients who received BLT had a higher remission rate of 40 percent compared to those groups that received only antidepressants at 23 percent, the New York Post reported.
Scholars hold the opinion that if administered accordingly, BLT has the potential of becoming a cheap intervention that complements or acts as a substitute for antidepressants in order to lighten up people with deep blues.
Since 2005, the American Psychiatric Association or APA encouraged BLT for depression patients with major depressive disorder as one of its treatment choices.