Light Therapy and Medical Phototherapy

Therapeutic use of light on established physiological grounds. Three distinct applications fall under it. Light therapy for seasonal affective disorder, recommended as first-line treatment by the American Psychiatric Association on a par with serotonin reuptake inhibitors, and included in the CANMAT guidelines since 2009. Neonatal phototherapy for jaundice, which appears on the World Health Organization's Model List of Essential Medicines and is codified by France's Haute Autorité de Santé, by NICE and by the American Academy of Pediatrics. And photobiomodulation, whose devices carry CE marks and Food and Drug Administration clearances — it being understood that the marking of a device is not the endorsement of a therapy. Niels Finsen received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1903 for phototherapy. This entry was separated from energetic chromotherapy (TI90) on 4 August 2026: both practices invoke light, but one is codified by health agencies and the other was banned by the United States federal courts.

This therapy is covered in detail (principles, indications, protocol, level of evidence) in Volume 7 of the Mémento des Psychothérapies. See the volume.