Assessment of Light Therapy in Insomnia Disorder

Sleep disorders represent a major public health issue and the leader in these disorders is insomnia with 10 to 15% of subjects in the general population reporting symptoms of insomnia with a daytime impact. In addition to being very common, insomnia leads to an increase in morbidity and mortality and weighs on healthcare systems worldwide. Despite this public health context, insomnia is underdiagnosed and rarely treated. Hypnotics have proven efficacy but with a risk of dependence and pharmacotolerance which appears within a few weeks. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has a good level of evidence and is now a benchmark treatment for the management of insomnia. Unfortunately, not all patients adhere to or respond to these procedures, which cannot be implemented for many of them either. There is therefore a need to identify other alternative therapeutic strategies, and we believe that exposure to light is a promising treatment.

In this perspective, it seems interesting to assess the effect of the propensity to fall asleep with an exposure to light therapy in patients suffering from insomnia.

In order to be in optimal ecological conditions, we want to use a portable light therapy device which allows easy, acceptable and ambulatory exposure.

If the lighttherapy is confirmed in insomnia under ecological conditions, this would make it possible to propose a new non-drug treatment, easy to access and on a large scale