Regulating Mood and Suicidal Ideation with Morning Light Exposure Treatment
Abstract
Suicide continues to be an ongoing concern within the military. The reasons why a person may contemplate suicide can come from many directions, but it is clear that most people who carry out a suicide are struggling with strong emotions and trying to make difficult choices. Research has shown that the ability to regulate emotions and cope with stress is highly disrupted when a person has not had enough sleep or their internal biological rhythms (i.e., circadian rhythms) are poorly matched with their daily sleep-wake schedule. In fact, recent evidence suggests that suicides are more common in the earliest hours of the morning when a person would normally be sound asleep. This suggests that a mismatch between the circadian rhythm and the external schedule can exacerbate suicidal thinking. We propose that it may be possible to improve mood and reduce suicidal thinking by realigning these daily rhythms through a well-well validated process of light exposure. Prior work from our laboratory and many others suggests that well-timed exposure to bright blue light in the morning hours can help reset the timing of the circadian rhythm and lead to improvements in subsequent sleep and mood. We hypothesize that sleep problems observed in military personnel might be rapidly improved by implementing a simple daily light exposure treatment program using a simple pair of glasses with light-emitting diodes (LEDs) built in. Here, our objective is to conduct a large clinical trial directly comparing morning blue-wavelength light versus a placebo light for 2 weeks each to see whether light therapy is effective at reducing suicidal thinking and improving sleep and mood when used in a real-world setting. The proposed project addresses the FY21 TBIPHRP CTA Focus Area 2: Prevent, which focuses on Development, evaluation, and implementation of crosscutting prevention approaches targeting upstream factors...to address multiple adverse outcomes such as suicide. To accomplish this goal, we will recruit 400 military personnel. This will be done over the internet so that we can get the widest recruitment from a broad sample of military personnel around the country. Participants will serve as their own controls in this study. First, they will be sent a light exposure device that looks like a pair of eyeglasses. Two different versions of the glasses will be used. One has bright blue light LEDs built in and shines the light toward the eyes for 30 minutes each morning. The other version of the glasses has amber LEDs and will serve as a placebo version of the treatment. Each participant will use both sets of glasses at some point. The first set will be used for 2 weeks for 30 minutes each morning. Then they will get a break for 4 weeks and send the glasses back. Participants will then receive the second set of glasses with the alternate color LEDs. To measure how effective the light glasses are, the participant will wear an EEG headband at night to measure their sleep and an actigraph wristwatch to measure their sleep-wake patterns and will fill out an online sleep and mood diary each day. By the end of the study, we will be able to compare the amount and timing of sleep that occurred when people were wearing the blue glasses versus the placebo glasses. We hypothesize that the blue light glasses will lead to significant improvements in how much sleep people get relative to the placebo. We also expect that people will find themselves going to bed earlier during the blue light weeks compared to the placebo light weeks. This study will be the largest clinical trial of the effectiveness of blue light therapy in a real-life setting that has been conducted to date and would specifically focus on regulating circadian rhythms, mood, and suicidal ideation. The information obtained from this study would have wide-ranging implications for the use of blue light therapy as a method for optimizing mental health in military personnel and even
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Dec 28, 2022
- Source ID
- W81XWH2210990
Entities
People
- William D. Killgore
Organizations
- United States Army
- University of Arizona