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Comment by fiatjaf | Hacker News Reader

"A research paper published in the Journal of Affective Disorder in 2013 (four years after the first lights were installed) found that there was an 84 percent decrease in suicides at stations with the blue lights. The exact reason why the lights are effective isn’t known, but some researchers theorize that it’s related to the apparent positive effect of light on mood. A recent study led by Hiroshi Kadotani, from Shiga University of Medical Science found there was an “increased proportion of railway suicide attempts after several days without sunlight,” based on 971 suicides or attempted suicides in Tokyo between 2002 and 2006."

So they don't know how blue lights do anything. The title of the article is totally misleading.

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I have a http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00M3SGD4Y/ blue light in my office to use around noon in wintertime it has a powerful effect. Using it too early in the morning can throw your circadian rhythm so maybe lunch is the best time.

If all this were generally true of blue light, then a television monitor tuned to an all-blue channel would be just as effective.

> If all this were generally true of blue light, then a television monitor tuned to an all-blue channel would be just as effective.

If it hits the same frequencies.

The frequency of the light is important here, because our body/eyes pick up on and react differently to, well, different frequencies. Just because we perceive two lights as producing the same color does not mean that we will get the same reaction, physiologically, from both of them.

An "all-blue" channel is an artifact of your television. Modern televisions put up a solid color rather than snow when they fail to detect a carrier wave on the chosen channel.

The mechanics don't really matter. It's still just as effective.

Ok, but the "all-blue channel" is just the TV turning all the lights blue when it can't find a signal. Why bring a TV into it if you can just put up blue lights?

I was thinking something similar.

Light therapy is a common treatment for seasonal affective disorder and depression. Just speculating, but this sounds like a public health version of that, something like adding iodine to salt or fluoride to drinking water.

Watch out: light therapy for SAD is very well known, but the quality of the evidence is very low.

http://www.cochrane.org/CD011269/DEPRESSN_light-therapy-prev...

> Which studies were included in the review?

> We searched databases up to August 2015 for studies on light therapy to prevent winter depression. Among 2986 records, we found one randomised controlled study including 46 people who received light therapy or no treatment. All individuals in these studies had a history of winter depression.

> What does the evidence from the review reveal?

> The quality of evidence for all outcomes was very low, so we can draw no conclusions about whether light therapy is effective in preventing winter depression. The included study provided no information on side effects of light therapy.

[...]

> Authors' conclusions:

> Evidence on light therapy as preventive treatment for patients with a history of SAD is limited. Methodological limitations and the small sample size of the only available study have precluded review author conclusions on effects of light therapy for SAD. Given that comparative evidence for light therapy versus other preventive options is limited, the decision for or against initiating preventive treatment of SAD and the treatment selected should be strongly based on patient preferences. It has a plausible mechanism of action, and (so long as other treatment approaches aren't ignored) it's unlikely to do any harm.

> we found one randomised controlled study

> the small sample size of the only available study

The only study?

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=light+therapy+depressio...

There are numerous studies showing a benefit from light therapy.

It is true that the the quality of the evidence could be improved. That's a political/financial issue, not a reflection of the efficacy (or lack thereof) of light therapy. The available evidence supports the treatment.

I read that to mean there was only one study that was randomized & controlled.

Basically when you say "there are studies that show X" you aren't saying anything because "studies" are cheap unless your methodology is rigorous and sound, which isn't the case a lot of the time.

Of course. Here are three randomized, controlled studies just from the first page of the Google Scholar results:

http://archpsyc.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=20429...

http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/ajp.2006.16...

http://archpsyc.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=20433...

Apparently, 91 papers passed Nussbaumer et al's assessment of the abstract (and were presumably randomized, controlled trials):

We assessed 91 full-text papers for inclusion in the review, but only one study providing data from 46 people met our eligibility criteria.

Those eligibility criteria were:

For efficacy, we included randomised controlled trials on adults with a history of winter-type SAD who were free of symptoms at the beginning of the study.

I think it may have been the focus on prevention (rather than treatment of symptomatic depression) that excluded all the other papers.

I just skimmed the paper the paper the first time and didn't notice that the authors were searching for studies of a very specific question: prevention (excluding treatment) of seasonal affective disorder (excluding any other form of depression).

From Amazon: "84 percent of users were satisfied with the way Philips goLITE BLU helped them to fight winter blues."

From Article: "84 percent decrease in suicides at stations with the blue lights."

Wow, nice catch!

Maybe a better title would have left off the initial word "How."

> So they don't know how blue lights do anything.

It appears that they also don't know whether the blue lights prevent suicides, or merely relocate them to somewhere besides train stations.

Regardless, reducing the number of suicides in train stations is not a bad goal ...

> Part of the reason the city concentrates its efforts here is because such “human accidents” are costly and can disrupt tens of thousands of passengers for up to an hour, weekly or even daily.

... but it is not really a goal that is motivated by concern for the people who might kill themselves.

> So they don't know how

Along with the shift in meaning of "literally," another major shift in language is occurring w/r/t to the use of "How."

Often these days, you can substitute "How" with "That."

For example, in this article, it's not about "How the lights helped people." It's more like "That the lights helped people."

I'm not trying to say you're wrong or that I like this practice. All I'm saying is it's part of a bigger trend.

> Along with the shift in meaning of "literally," another major shift in language is occurring w/r/t to the use of "How."

> Often these days, you can substitute "How" with "That."

Not really; the uses of "how" -- which aren't really substitutes for "that" -- that don't address a mechanism by which an effect is achieved but either the manner in which it manifests or the degree to which it manifests (the latter being essentially the same as phrase "how much", though the "much" is often left out) are both centuries old and in continuous, common use.

The article is not about merely "That the lights reduce suicide" but "How [much] the lights reduce suicide". Which is a long-established, not novel, use of "How", despite being distinct from another potential meaning of "how", "By what mechanism did the lights reduce suicide."

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