Background and goals: Psychotherapy is one of the most highly recommended and practiced approaches for the treatment of Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). Commonly defined as excessive worry that is uncontrollable, GAD is one of the most prevalent psychiatric disorders. Anxiety is also one of the most common associated symptoms of migraine. Exposing migraineurs to narrow band green light (nbGL) reduces their anxiety and anxiety-like physiological symptoms such as throat tightness, shortness of breath, and palpitations. Here, we sought to determine whether the reduced anxiety described by our patients was secondary to the reduced headache or independent of it. The goal of the current study was therefore to determine whether exposure to nbGL can reduce anxiety in GAD patients who are not migraineurs.
Patients and methods: Included in this open-label, proof-of-concept, prospective study were 13 patients diagnosed with moderate-to-severe GAD. We used the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory Questionnaire (Y-1) to compare anxiety level before and after each 45-minutes psychotherapy session conducted in white light (WL) (intensity = 100±5 candela/m2) vs nbGL (wavelength = 520±10nm (peak ± range), intensity = 10±5 candela/m2).
Results: Here, we show that psychotherapy sessions conducted under nbGL increase positive and decrease negative feelings significantly more than psychotherapy sessions conducted under regular room light (χ2 = 0.0001).
Conclusion: The findings provide initial evidence for the potential benefit of conducting psychotherapy sessions for patients suffering GAD under nbGL conditions. Given the absence of side effects or risks, we suggest that illuminating rooms used in psychotherapy with nbGL be considered an add-on to the treatment of GAD.
Keywords: GAD; depression; migraine; photophobia; psychotherapy; retina.
© 2023 Melo-Carrillo et al.