Light Therapy: Strong for Seasonal Depression, Promising Beyond It

Summary

Bright-light therapy is a genuinely drug-comparable, underused treatment for seasonal affective disorder (Strong Evidence), but the same well-earned signal is being stretched into a "light box for everything" market where the non-seasonal, bipolar, and perinatal data are only Moderate, the dose details (morning, ~10,000 lux measured at your actual eye-to-lamp distance, ~30 min) are load-bearing and routinely mis-sold, and bipolar disorder is a hard do-not-self-start contraindication. The 10,000-lux lamp is a SUBSTITUTE for real morning sunlight, reached for when genuine outdoor light is not av