Home-based light room therapy for seasonal affective disorder: A randomised controlled trial
- Conditions
- F33Recurrent depressive disorder
- Registration Number
- DRKS00023075
- Lead Sponsor
- Fakultät für GesundheitUniversität Witten/Herdecke
- Brief Summary
Not available
- Detailed Description
Not available
Recruitment & Eligibility
- Status
- Pending
- Sex
- All
- Target Recruitment
- 176
We will include patients suffering from major depressive disorder (recurrent episode) with a winter seasonal pattern” and use the structured clinical interview of the DSM-V for diagnosis because it is considered the gold standard for diagnosing winter depression (24, 25). We will only include patients who are usually at home for at least 6 hours during morning and afternoon (before 18:00), on at least 5 days per week (e.g. people that work from home, stay-at-home parents, people without employment …)
We will exclude:
patients who have used light therapy in the previous four months to avoid carryover effects
patients with ocular diseases or who are taking photosensitising medication to reduce the risk of damaging their eyes,
patients who do shift work, because we want to study the effects of light therapy in the morning after a night of sleep, which is not possible for these people,
pregnant participants, in case this new treatment has any unforeseen negative effects on unborn babies,
patients who have started or stopped taking melatonin in the previous four months, because this is a different treatment for winter depression that might introduce too much variance,
patients who have started taking a new antidepressant in the previous six weeks, because this would introduce too much variance,
patients who are not fit to consent,
patients with a history of at least one manic episode.
Study & Design
- Study Type
- interventional
- Study Design
- Not specified
- Primary Outcome Measures
Name Time Method Symptom severity after 4 weeks of treatment: Questionnaire on SAD symptoms, the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale-Seasonal Affective Disorders (SIGH-SAD)
- Secondary Outcome Measures
Name Time Method - Symptom severity after 2 weeks of treatment as measured by SIGH-SAD<br>- Fraction of patients in remission after 2 and 4 weeks<br>- Patients’ qualitative impression of treatment after 4 weeks<br>