Bright light therapy in dementia care

Bright Light Therapy

This involves sitting in front of a light box for up to 2 hours a day. It is thought to be particularly beneficial to patients in winter to receive this treatment as it helps to replace the natural light that is lost. It is particularly thought to benefit patients who may be in a care home environment and are not getting much access to the outdoors due to the weather. It is thought that by giving this treatment, it helps to reset a patient’s body clock in other words, regulate the body’s natural circadian rhythm. 

Why bright light therapy?

This therapy is thought to help patients who are struggling with their sleep or sleeping patterns. It also used as a therapy to help tackle some of the dementia behaviours associated with lack of sleep, such as sundowning, aggression or wandering.

What does the therapy involve?

The patient is sat in front of a bright light box for up to 2 hours. Some will receive 30 min treatment, others more. The therapy is thought to be more effective if carried out in the morning but research is still ongoing. 

Research

Those patients that have taken part in research trials, were noted to sleep better, with less trouble getting to sleep as well as sleeping for an extra amount of time in the morning, than those patients who did not take part in the bright light treatment. However, more trials are needed with the research, as it was shown that when the light therapy was used by patients in summer, the reverse impact was noticed. So those patients who didn’t have any light therapy treatment slept better and for longer, than those patients who did receive the light therapy treatment in the summer months. Other tests have been tried using melatonin and light therapy. For those patients that received melatonin and light therapy, the light therapy had no impact on their sleeping patterns or dementia symptoms. Therefore, more research is needed to identify how light therapy can work and in which cases it will be beneficial to patients. 

More information will be shared here once further research has been undertaken in light box therapy.