Canadian Consensus Guidelines for the Treatment of Seasonal Affective Disorder - Softcover

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Raymond W. Lam is Professor and Head of the Division of Mood Disorders, Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia, and Medical Director of the Mood Disorders Program, UBC Hospital, Vancouver.

Anthony J. Levitt is Associate Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Nutrition, University of Toronto, and Head of the Mood Disorders Program, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto.

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Canadian Consensus Guidelines for the Treatment of Seasonal Affective Disorder is the first comprehensive clinical guide for the diagnosis and treatment of seasonal affective disorder (SAD), a type of clinical depression that affects between 2% and 3% of the Canadian population. Drs. Raymond W. Lam and Anthony J. Levitt, leading clinician-researchers in SAD, organized a Canadian Consensus Group to develop consensus guidelines for the treatment of SAD. Using a rigorous consensus process, the members of this group reviewed the world scientific literature and formulated evidence-based recommendations for the diagnosis and treatment of SAD. Draft guidelines were extensively discussed, reviewed by international experts in the field, and then ratified by the Canadian Consensus Group. This book is the final result.

The consensus guidelines are organized into four major sections: Diagnosis, Epidemiology, and Pathophysiology Light Treatment Medication Treatment Management Issues

The question-and-answer format of the guidelines makes them readily accessible to busy clinicians. Summary tables of recommendations and conclusions allow rapid access to the most important information. A rating of level of scientific evidence is included after every recommendation so that areas of controversy or limited data are highlighted. A full bibliography of over 650 references, updated to June 1, 1999, is also included as a resource for researchers.

These guidelines will be clinically useful to family doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, and other health professionals who treat depression and SAD. Researchers and students will find the concise reviews of the literature highly informative. Knowledgeable consumers and family members will also discover practical information and answers to many of their questions about SAD.

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From Preface by Dr. Dan Oren - The Book of Ecclesiastes (1:9) records that "there is nothing new under the sun." The story of winter depression (seasonal affective disorder) seems eloquent testimony to this ancient dictum. The struggle to treat the sometimes disabling symptoms of this disorder occupies the minds of some of today's best psychiatrists and psychologists, much as it caught the attention of physicians as ancient as Hippocrates (as cited, 1931) almost two and one-half millennia ago. [More recently] a number of investigators developed an insight that disorders of the biological clock and the processing of light might play roles in some psychiatric illnesses. [Researcher] Norman E. Rosenthal and colleagues [demonstrated in 1984] that winter depression or "seasonal affective disorder" could be considered a distinct subtype of major depression and that light therapy was an effective treatment...[findings that] quickly attracted the attention of the media, patients, and researchers across the globe. [By] 1998 more than 1000 patients worldwide had participated in controlled clinical trials of light or antidepressant medication therapy for the disorder. Similar to the pace in so many areas of medicine, what we have learned in the past 15 years about this disorder surely equals or exceeds that which was learned in the 1500 years before. In this context, these consensus guidelines assembled by Raymond W. Lam and Anthony J. Levitt and their Canadian colleagues mark a culmination and summation of an era. The documents that follow are based on careful assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of virtually every known study ever conducted for the treatment of winter depression. These guidelines will surely reach landmark status in their own right, by summarizing a world literature demonstrating the efficacy of light therapy, and now a [medication therapy] for winter depression. [These] Consensus Guidelines will surely be of value to...clinicians the world over, for there is simply nothing to match this accomplishment...any clinician interested in offering their patient with winter depression the best that medical science has to offer will be well advised to turn to these guidelines.