Would You Benefit From A SAD Light Therapy Lamp?

You can’t be blamed if you can’t tell yet, but the days are starting to get a little bit longer. When winter arrived on Saturday, we officially passed the shortest day of the year. And while it’s a long way until spring that should make most of us feel a bit less gloomy.

But if you still do, you’re not alone. It’s a syndrome called “SAD” – short for Seasonal Affective Disorder – and for many there couldn’t be a more appropriate acronym. A lack of sun appears to leave many feeling depressed, and some scientists think it’s because the darkness fails to trigger a chemical in our brain that controls our mood. But not everyone suffers from it, and there are a host of theories about why some feel depressed while others don’t.

Studies cited by the Canadian Mental Health Association indicate 2 to 3 per cent of the population in Ontario is affected by some form of SAD, while 15 percent experience the “winter blahs” – similar to SAD, but without the clinical depression.

Robin Stagg knows the feeling all too well. “It’s an absolute nightmare,” he confirms. “I feel like any enjoyment I could have in life has been removed, and then a depression and a sadness sets into the body … It’s an effort to get out of bed to go to work, and some days I couldn’t even do that. I would just say I can’t come in and I would lie down for most of the day.”

But then Robin was told about ‘light therapy’, a special lamp that mimics the sun. His exposure to the brightness elevated his mood and made it easier for him to cope with a winter that never seemed to end. It takes just 30 minutes every morning. “There’s no pain,” he points out. “There’s no discomfort with it whatsoever.”

It’s been effective for him, but doctors are quick to note it’s not for everyone. “A good antidepressant treatment is as good as light therapy in treating SAD,” suggests researcher Dr. Robert Levitan. “Some people in fact might prefer medication because it’s easier to administer.”

But this Robin prefers to fly with the genie in his not-so-magic lamp. “What this light is doing for me, it’s given me this energy to be able to go through an entire day.”

Want to try light therapy for yourself? The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health is doing a study on the problem and if you qualify, they’ll lend you a lamp. To see if you’re eligible, contact them at (416) 535-8501 ext. 4863.

What Is SAD?

It all started, appropriately enough, with a shrink. In the late 1970’s, a South African psychologist named Norman Rosenthal came to New York to start his residency. He noticed that in the winter, he became tired and sluggish, feeling overwhelmed by the amount of work. But the feeling disappeared in the spring. It didn’t take him long to figure out the change in his attitude was due to his latitude: he was in a place with shorter days and longer nights.

Rosenthal put his theory to the test using patients with a history of winter depression. He exposed them to artificial light for several hours a day, and found many reported their symptoms were improved. And thus began the change from the ‘winter blahs’ to a recognized syndrome known as “Seasonal Affective Disorder.”

Symptoms of SAD correspond to those most commonly reported in depression:

• Feeling down and listless, 
• Change in appetite,
• Weight gain,
• Drop in energy,
• Tendency to oversleep,
• Difficulty with concentration and irritability.

The major difference: the symptoms disappear with the season.  Doctors now believe a lack of serotonin may be responsible for the disorder, which responds well to medications that boost the levels of that neurotransmitter in the brain. Others use specially constructed light boxes to simulate the sunshine they’re missing.

Still, there’s more we don’t know about SAD than what we do: why, for example, aren’t people at higher latitudes more susceptible to the syndrome? (It’s almost unheard of in Iceland.) What does that mean for the light theory? Or are there genetic factors at work? Doctors don’t know, but they’ll be spending many winters to come studying this phenomenon – hopefully with the lights on.