Question: For people with seasonal or non-seasonal depression, how effective is light therapy compared with any other or no intervention in improving all patient outcomes?

Answer:

Plain language summary

Bright white light therapy shows promise for people with seasonal depression but we don't have enough high-quality evidence to advise its use as standard. For people with non-seasonal depression, there is stronger evidence for using light therapy alongside antidepressant medication than by itself, but again more evidence is needed before recommending it as a treatment.

Clinical and research implications

No definite clinical implications may be made based on the evidence included in this BEST summary. In terms of further research directions, in one of the reviews included in this summary, it was suggested that there is a need to identify subgroups of non-seasonal depressed patients who may respond to light therapy better than others; the selection of these subgroups could be based on studies of patients with seasonal affective disorder, or by their daily cyclical (chronobiological) characteristics.

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