Page 178 - The Power of Light, Colour and Sound for Health and Wellness draft

USING COLOR LIGHT IN THE TREATMENT OF DEPRESSION
Frances McManemin, the frst president of the International Light Association, introduced me to the use of color light as a treatment modality. However, it was not until I attended the ILA meeting in Switzerland that I began to appreciate its promise for the treatment of depression. In one of the sessions, Primrose Cooper shared with the group that when she had been very depressed, she could not tolerate looking at her fower and seed catalogues because she couldn’t tolerate all of the colors. This triggered memories of similar experiences I had when I was depressed. I returned home determined to explore the color and depression relationship. However, I also realized that while I was comfortable with the clinical aspects of depression, I was totally out of my area of expertise in the area of understanding and using color light. Different colors are composed of different amounts of red, green and blue. Different computer monitors will display a color differently. Acknowledging my lack of expertise and taking responsibility for errors, the following is a description of what I did in trying to understand the color and depression relationship and the data that I collected.
In my initial work (Ross, et al. 2011) I did a small study of nine individuals using Audio-Bio Color System light system to treat chronically depressed individuals. The study was reviewed and approved by the IRB at the local university and all clients reviewed and signed an informed consent form. Pre- and post-measures of depression using the PHQ-9(Kroenke, 1999) there was a signifcant decrease in depression after color light therapy (t = 5.13, p < .01). Prior to treatment, the PHQ-9 scores indicated that 20% of the individuals had moderate depression, 50% had moderate to severe depression, and 30% had severe depression. Post-treatment scores indicated that 90% of the individuals experienced less depression and 70% had no depression or only mild depression.
Pre- and post- treatment measures of colors selected revealed signifcant changes in the post- treatment selections of green and blue. There was an increase of the selection of green (t = 2.53, p<.05) and a signifcant decrease in the selection of blue (t = -2.58, p< .05).
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