TV & Computer Screens & Depression

You might want to think twice about falling asleep watching TV, at least if you want to avoid depression.

It looks like that late night watching may be impacting our brains in more ways than one. And it might be increasing your chances of developing depression.

That's the conclusion from neuroscientists at Ohio State Medical Center. They say that an increase in the number of people with depression over the last 50 years coincides with an increase in our exposure to late night artificial light, like that given off by a TV or a computer screen late at night. Studying how hamsters adapted to late night lighting, these researchers found they developed a hamster's equivalent of depression, similar to the ways humans would. And this happened after only a few weeks with that dim light at night. But they also found changes to the actual structure of their brains from the depression and its similar to what they have seen before in humans suffering from the same thing.

They feel that night time light, from a TV or computer, is what is causing these changes and part of the reason behind an increase in depression nationwide.

The good news is that this is reversible. Once the late night dim lights were taken away, the hamsters went back to normal after only a few weeks. So for us humans, the message here is that if you are a late night computer person or a TV watcher, especially as you fall asleep, you might need to give yourself a break for a couple of weeks every now and then to keep depression at bay.