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Charlotte Remé, MD
University of Zürich Eye Clinic CH-8091 Zürich, Switzerland

Michael Terman, PhD
New York State Psychiatric Institute 722 W 168th St New York, NY 10032

Anna Wirz-Justice, PhD
Psychiatric University Clinic CH-4025 Basel, Switzerland

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1990;47(9):878-879.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

Seasonal affective disorder (SAD)¹ is a recurrent form of depression associatedwith the length of daylight or photoperiod. It can be effectively treated by exposure to bright light.² This novel therapy developed from circadian models of seasonal behavior in mammals and, by analogy, has thus been hypothesized to be a circadian intervention. One study suggests that, indeed, the response to light is mediated by the eye,³ but none of the proposed mechanisms has received unequivocal empirical support, whether it is that the therapeutic effect is mediated by a phase shift induced by a light pulse, by an augmentation of circadian amplitude, or an increase in number of photons absorbed.

We suggest that SAD could be tied to a deficiency in retinal photoreceptor renewal mechanisms. Since retinal response to light is the first step in circadian rhythm regulation, understanding it is therefore crucial in considerations of . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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