The recent study showed that a day light can reduce the risk of depressions in the hospitals and a home. The Danish researchers stressed that hospital patients with depression who stay in brighter rooms are on average admitted for 30 days fewer than patients who stayed in darker rooms, videnskab.dk reported.
The article in the journal Neuropsychobiology lays out the recent developments regarding depression and the impact of the daylight on it. Researchers from the University of Copenhagen believe that a light helps to maintain a good circadian rhythm, which is important for a fast recovery.
‘But it’s interesting and surprising that daylight in a hospital ward has such a large effect on the duration of hospital admissions among people with depression,’
says co-author Klaus Martiny. Her colleague, Poul Videbech, a professor and doctor at the Psychiatric Center in Glostrup, Denmark, supports this development, finding it “highly interesting, that you can show how architecture plays a role in health.”
Both daylight and dynamic light kill depression
In other words, the daylight is able to kill the depression, at least, make the organism to recover from it faster. So Martiny and Videbech agree that light should be taken into account in the design of hospitals – by substituting natural daylight with artificial daylight using specially produced lamps, known as dynamic light.
Dynamic light contains nuances that are absent from your average lamp at home. These nuances are perceived by the brain in the same way as if it were natural daylight. Professor Videbech sees this as a natural part of hospital planning in the future.
The old buildings of the hospital originally have no ability to offer the patients maximum of the daylight but when modern architectors plan new hospitals they should think about this. It is very important to add light panels to patients rooms, which are perhaps dark because of how they are placed.
