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Depression-Fighting SAD Lamps Aren't Just For Your Winter Blues

We don't know why it works—only that it does.

There's a familiar ritual for people suffering from seasonal affective disorder, or SAD, a very real condition that leaves people feeling depressed in the slushy depths of winter: you wake up, the world still dark and frigid, and you flip on a little lamp that tricks your brain into thinking you're absorbing sunlight. It's a treatment with some serious techno-dystopian vibes, yet research has shown for decades that it works.

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But according to new research, those dorky little lamps aren't only useful for people with SAD. In a study that tested the efficacy of SAD lightboxes alongside antidepressants on people with non-seasonal depression, researchers at the University of British Columbia concluded that those little lamps can help with regular old non-winter related clinical depression, too.

"We always think of seasonal depression as a different type of depression for all kinds of good reasons, so people haven't considered light therapy as a way to treat non-seasonal depression," Dr. Raymond Lam, the psychiatrist at the University of British Columbia who led the study, told me over the phone. "We thought it was time for a good study, so that's what we did."

The lightbox used in the study. Image: University of British Columbia.

Although some of the earliest studies on the effectiveness of SAD lamps involved people without SAD itself, these studies were small—just seven subjects, in some cases—and unsatisfactory, Lam said.

The study, published on Wednesday in JAMA Psychiatry, split 121 subjects into four test groups. The first group got the lamp with a placebo antidepressant, the second got the lamp with a real pill, the third group used a switched-off negative ion generator—effectively a placebo, since it's hard to fake light—and an antidepressant, and the final group got a real negative ion generator with a fake pill.

Negative ion generators are machines that fill the air with electrically-charged air molecules, which supposedly have an effect that may help with depression. But for the purposes of this study, Lam said, they just had to look fancy and make a nice noise.

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After eight weeks of treatment, subjects with the real lamp and fake pills reported feeling much better, while those with the lamps and real pills reported feeling the best out of all the groups. Sorry, folks with ion generators.

While the result is promising, Lam said, it doesn't necessarily mean that people with depression should run out and buy a lightbox right now. Although the study does suggest that these things can help, there are still some basic questions to investigate. For one: why the hell do these things work in the first place?

"We don't know why it works," Lam said. "But we do know from SAD studies that there are some major theories. One is that light corrects the circadian rhythm problems that people with depression have, and there is some evidence that people with non-seasonal depression have circadian rhythm disruptions, as well. It acts on the biological clock in the brain, basically."

Whatever the case, Lam's study suggests that light therapy can help treat depression even when it's not seasonally-related. Although Lam was cautious in saying that people should discuss light therapy with their doctor before undertaking it, he also said that it appears as though we now have another weapon at our disposal in the fight against depression.

"We should start looking to it as an option," he said.