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Sunlight and wellbeing of patients with mood and anxiety disorders
Date Issued |
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2011-05-29 |
Objective To determine an association between sunlight and wellbeing of patients with mood and anxiety disorders (MAD) in relation to the season of the year. Method Subjective evaluation of wellbeing of patients with MAD was performed using 18 item diary. Each patient filled in diary every day during 21 day stay at the day care program for MAD. Between June 2008 and November 2010, 132 consecutive patients with MAD, 26 (20%) men and 106 (80%) women, ranging from 19 to 69 years of age were recruited for the study. The sunlight was evaluated using solar radiation, intensity of solar energy and cloudiness. Meteorological data were collected using Vantage Pro2TM weather station. An association between meteorological factors and subjective wellbeing of patients was evaluated using Spearman’s Rank order coefficients (r). Results In spring time solar radiation and intensity of solar energy positively (r from 0.18 to 0.39, p<0.05) and cloudiness negatively (r from -0.17 to -0.35, p<0.05) correlated with different characteristics of wellbeing. The strongest correlations were established with irritability, anxiety, daytime sleepiness, apathy, bad mood, lack of energy and headache. However, in other seasons of the year, solar radiation and intensity of solar energy negatively correlated only with a few items of the diary, such as vertigo (r=-0.17) in autumn and bad mood (r=-0.22) in winter. Cloudiness negatively correlated with sense of poor wellbeing (r=-0.14), anxiety (r=-0.14) and daytime sleepiness (r=-0.16) in summer time and positively, with poor wellbeing (r=0.23), weakness (r=0.18), anxiety (r=0.20), daytime sleepiness (r=-0.16), headache (r=0.17) vertigo (r=0.25) in autumn as well as with daytime sleepiness (r=0.18) in winter. Conclusion Sunlight has a significant impact on wellbeing of patients with MAD. The strongest association between sunlight and wellbeing was established in spring.