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These landmark consensus reports reviewed the evidence for light therapy in sleep and circadian rhythm disorders and helped establish early clinical guidelines.
In 1992 the American Sleep Disorders Association (ASDA) and Society for Light Treatment and Biological Rhythms (SLTBR) commissioned a task force to review the experimental and clinical evidence for the potential efficacy of light treatment for sleep disorders. The appointed chair, Michael Terman, recruited a committee of experts including Ziad Boulos, Scott Campbell, Derk-Jan Dijk, Charmane Eastman, and Alfred Lewy. The agencies’ operational objective was to provide information for the ASDA Standards of Practice Committee (Michael Thorpy, Chair) to consider in developing recommendations and guidelines for the use of light treatment in sleep disorders medicine.
The task force was asked to write a consensus statement that would integrate comments by external colleagues. Subtopics were assigned to individual members who wrote initial drafts: history of experimentation with light in humans (Campbell), circadian and sleep processes (Dijk), noncircadian alerting and activating effects (Campbell), treatment of sleep phase and duration disorders (Terman and Lewy), treatment for the elderly (Campbell), treatment for shift work (Eastman), and treatment for jet lag (Boulos). The sections were further developed at a series of symposia and workshops at meetings of the Association of Professional Sleep Societies, Northeast Sleep Society, SLTBR, the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms, and at a Banbury Center conference, and draft versions were published in the SLTBR bulletin, Light Treatment and Biological Rhythms, with solicitation of additional input from the field.
The articles that follow constitute the final report of the task force, which reached consensus on most matters. Divisions of opinion have been noted and explained. The report aims to describe comprehensively the state-of-the-art. Beyond its function of generating medical guidelines, it summarizes the field’s accomplishments, unknowns, and research priorities for colleagues whose emphasis is on nonhuman organisms and for students and clinicians who are curious about the application of circadian rhythm principles.
Michael Terman, Task Force Chair
Columbia University, New York State
Psychiatric Institute, and Center for
Environmental Therapeutics
JOURNAL OF BIOLOGICAL RHYTHMS, Vol. 10 No. 2, June 1995
