Thursday 12 of December at 8:15 h, in the auditorium of the Hospital Universitario Son Espases we will have the IdISBa-HUSE‘s scientific meeting, “All you ever wanted to know about  light therapy, sleep deprivation, melatonin,  and other chronotherapies for depression“, by Dr. Anna Wirz-Justice, founder of Centre for Chronobiology at the Psychiatric University Clinics in Basel.

Professor emerita Anna Wirz-Justice founded the Centre for Chronobiology at the Psychiatric University Clinics in Basel, Switzerland. Her research addresses the diagnosis and treatment of circadian and seasonal mood and sleep disturbances. She introduced light therapy for winter depression in Europe, and extended applications to non-seasonal affective illness, dementia, and sleep problems in other psychiatric, neurologic and somatic illnesses.

She is former President of the  Swiss Society for Sleep Research, Sleep Medicine and Chronobiology and the Society for Light Treatment and Biological Rhythms. Her research has been awarded a number of prizes including the international Anna-Monika Prize for Depression Research (with T.Wehr), the Science Prize of the City of Basel and that of the Velux Foundation.

The Internet-Forum “Center for Environmental Therapeutics” (www.cet.org) was co-founded to provide research-based information about chronotherapy, as was the practical treatment Manual Chronotherapeutics for Affective Disorders.

Her present interest is working with architects and light planners to optimise the use of (day)light in buildings and in everyday life (www.daylight.academy), see “Changing perspectives on daylight: science, technology, and culture” (Science / AAAS, Washington DC, 2017).