A Guide to CET Resources

Do you have sleep concerns related to your work shift, insomnia, or napping?

Are you experiencing depressed mood that interferes with your work or personal life?

CET can provide guidance through its extensive set of practical resources.

What is it ?The Automated Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire (AutoMEQ) is a web-based question-and answer instrument that you can complete on your own in about 10 minutes.  It gives you individualized, confidential feedback about your personal “circadian rhythm type.” By comparing the score of the questionnaire to melatonin measurements from research subjects, you can closely estimate your natural bedtime, sleep onset and rise time for morning light therapy. That information can constructively help address issues such as winter depression or a delayed sleep pattern, which interfere with optimal daytime performance, mood, and energy.

The AutoMEQ has 19 questions about your daily sleep-wake habits and the times of day you prefer certain activities.

When is it useful?

The AutoMEQ can help anyone struggling with sleep problems — for example, as they relate to disruptive shift work. It can also be used to suggest behavioral therapies and chronotherapy techniques such as light therapy.

What is it?

The Daily Sleep/Mood/Energy Log is a PDF worksheet that you can print out, with 8 simple instructions identifying irregular sleep patterns, allowing you to create a record of improvement as you look for solutions.

Each log sheet covers one week and tracks your sleep, mood, and energy patterns in a form for easy review, helping you or your therapist detect problems and trends toward improvement — for example, as you introduce timed light therapy.  You can print multiple copies to track your status over weeks or even months.

When is it useful?

The log can be useful for anyone with sleep issues, by helping identify specific patterns of poor sleep and the responsible factors, permitting intelligent choices for constructive change. With this information recorded, it can be extremely useful to look back to earlier periods to see how you handled schedule changes that were helpful (or not helpful).

The log can be invaluable during consultations with a clinician, since its data are detailed and specific — far more helpful than an office visit or virtual appointment. The record of changes in medication schedule, work and recreational activities, diet, and other factors can be very helpful in pointing to lasting solutions that enhance sleep, mood, and energy.

What is it?

Automated Structured Interview for the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale with Atypical Depression Supplement (AutoSIGH) is a substitute for live interviewing in a doctor’s office, saving time and encouraging you to get involved in discussion and decision making.

The AutoSIGH is a 10 to 20 minute anonymous and confidential survey of over 25 mood, anxiety, energy, sleep, eating, physical and sexual issues. As you take the survey, the AutoSIGH determines which questions are most relevant to describing and addressing your problem, and the scope of questioning is adjusted online accordingly.

When is it useful?

The AutoSIGH can benefit anyone who is uncertain about their mood and mental state. It indicates degrees of disturbance that span the wide range from major depression to minor depression to feeling blue. It can also reassure you that despite some problems — which anyone can experience now and then — you may fall into a normal range that should not cause concern.

The AutoSIGH can help someone understand that they may need to seek professional help. And once a course of treatment begins, it can precisely track progress, guide treatment modifications, and signal when the problem has been resolved.

What is it?

Light therapy is a technique that uses the natural power of light to help regulate sleep, mood, and energy.

When is it useful?

Light therapy is most often used to treat people with seasonal affective disorder (SAD), but as new research studies are completed it also shows promise for a wide variety of other mental health disorders, such as delayed sleep phase disorder, nonseasonal depression, the depressive phase of bipolar disorder and depression associated with pregnancy and childbirth. Recent research points to the use of light therapy for patients with Parkinson’s disease, fibromyalgia, post-traumatic stress disorder and more. The list keeps growing!

While light therapy can be effectively self-administered in many cases, it may require professional guidance to maximize the chances of improvement. Those attempting to do-it-yourself should keep this in mind if they don’t achieve rapid results on their own.

Resources

CET offers many resources on the effective use of light therapy including:

• A basic guide to light therapy
• How to select a light box
• Light therapy: its discovery and applications