Best Fix For SAD: Cognitive Therapy Beats Light Therapy

As the days grow shorter, gentle readers who suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) grow SADDER, and the natural relief of longer days is months away. Now, for the first time, comes a study comparing the effectiveness of common treatments for the ailment. mainly light therapy and cognitive behavior therapy (talking to a counselor). The researchers, working at the University of Vermont, put 69 people with SAD into one of four groups: light therapy treatment,
cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), a combination of the two or a
wait-list control. They then surveyed participants on how they were
doing the next winter – one year later. A UVM press release reports that of those treated with CBT, only 7 percent had a recurrence, compared
to 36.7 percent of people treated with light therapy. The recurrence rate
for the combination group was 5.5 percent. Wait, there's more: When researchers looked at the
severity of the depression that did occur, CBT was associated with
less severe depression than those treated with either light therapy or a
combination of both. The university points out that a previous study that measured the acute affects of each treatment
(immediately following six weeks of intervention), foundn that combination therapy was
highly effective, with a nearly 80 percent remission rate compared to 50
percent for both CBT and light therapy alone and 20 percent on the wait
list.

Read more from the University of Vermont.