Day Light Treatment Benefits

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Non-seasonal Mood Disorders:

There are many varieties of clinical mood disorders caused by a number of factors that can occur at any time of year. These low moods may be continuous for years at a time or be shorter in duration. Regardless of the pattern, all mood disorders should be evaluated and treated by a trained mental health professional or your primary care physician.

Some patients with non-seasonal mood disorders have shown good response to light therapy. As a first step, you can evaluate whether your blue mood is seasonal or non-seasonal, and whether it is clinically severe or not, using the tools available from The Center for Environmental Therapeutics website –www.cet.org.

Light therapy is increasingly being used by both outpatients and hospitalized inpatients and, in some cases, patients who have not responded to medication have responded to light therapy. In general, the treatment regimen for non-seasonal mood disorders (10,000 LUX of bright light for 30 minutes upon awakening), is the same as for SAD, although some non-seasonal patients require milder exposures (lower intensity, shorter duration, treatment later in the day) .