Andrew may have been right. Now is the time of year where the excitement of being back in State College or being here for the first time is waning. On top of that, you are now coming to terms with the large workload and looming mid terms are starting to get to you. While you have your nose crammed in different textbooks, the weather is changing and we all know once winter starts in central PA, it doesn’t end until May. All of this can easily cause some depression; I’m depressed just talking about it. But it turns out that it may be the weather, not your Chemistry exam, thats causing your depression.

The depression you are beginning to feel now might actually be a result of a form of seasonal depression known as seasonal affective disorder (SAD), a type of depression caused by the lack of sunlight that results from the shorter days of fall and winter. And yes, the acronym for this disorder is the source of my bad pun of a title… it’s been a long week. However, SAD is not anything to laugh about. According to the Mayo Clinic, more than 3 million Americans are diagnosed with SAD each year and symptoms include fatigue, depression, hopelessness and social withdraw. Fortunately, it seems these symptoms end when the seasons change but months of depression is not fun no matter how you spin it.

Light therapy is one way of treating seasonal affective disorder. Logic would say that if a lack of sunlight is the cause of SAD, then a reasonable cure would be more sunlight, right? Michael Miller, Senior Editor for Harvard Health Publications states that, “Bright light works by stimulating cells in the retina that connect to the hypothalamus, a part of the brain that helps control circadian rhythms. Activating the hypothalamus at a certain time every day can restore a normal circadian rhythm and thus banish seasonal symptoms.” But before you go out and buy a $200 light box (yikes), lets see if it’s actually worth it.

A double-blind, randomized control trial was conducted over three winters to compare the effects of light therapy and the antidepressant fluoxetine when it comes to treating SAD; the findings were published in the American Journal of Psychiatry. They found that there was a quicker response in those treated with light therapy than those treated with antidepressants but the overall effectiveness of both treatments seemed to be the same. Additionally, there was a lower rate of the adverse effects one can experience while taking fluoxetine. Now, it’s important to take into account that they only used 93 subjects over 3 winters as their sample size for this experiment. Because it was a randomized control trial, we can assume that each group was, on average, a good representation of the full 93. On the other hand, as we saw earlier, the Mayo Clinic cites that approximately 3 million people are affected by SAD yearly. It is hard to extrapolate the findings of a sample size of 93 without anticipating a decent margin of error.

Luckily, another study was published in the American Journal of Psychiatry that synthesized 28 years (1975-2003) of randomized control trials that filled their predisposed credentials that looked at the effects of light therapy for mood disorders. They found that many of the studies they looked at did not have rigorous study designs and only 13% of them fit their criteria. But in the studies that did qualify, they found that light therapy was effective in decreasing the severity of depression symptoms. Even more interesting was that they found that using light therapy and antidepressants together did not yield any more reduction in these symptoms.

Based on these two studies I think it is safe to say that more randomized control trials need to be conducted with rigorous study designs. Additionally, the first study has an interesting premise. It would be more useful to medicine to know if light therapy was more effective than antidepressants but a larger sample size is a must if they were to redo that particular experiment.

Now, this doesn’t mean you should at that light box to your Christmas list quite yet. I would suggest going outside and enjoying the fall. Maybe go on a hike! Because before you know it, that dorm room is going to become more of a prison than a bedroom!