Nina (27 years, Dutch) participated in the PROUD-study and followed our light therapy. In this interview she describes the influences light therapy had on her ADHD symptoms.
What is it like to live with ADHD?
Please describe your main symptoms.
The symptom I experience as the most troublesome is making new friends. It is harder for me to make new friends, knowing I have fewer emotional and cognitive skills than peers. I am more sensitive to persons and situations and I experience them as more severe.
Besides, it is harder for me to see things in perspective and my perspectives change a lot over short periods of time. This makes it harder to look further in the future when making decisions. I also have less patience and it is harder for me to concentrate on a task.
How does ADHD influence your life?
As I explained in the question before it can be tough to make friends. Concerning work, my ADHD has positive and negative effects. The negative effects are my lack of concentration, sometimes a job has to be done at a certain moment when I have no concentration, which can be a real struggle. The positive side is that I am creative and my spatial development is good. These are qualities that come handy at my job. Also my intelligence helps me. Because I am smart I can work fast at the moments my concentration is good, in order to compensate for the moments where my concentration is lost.
Do you think ADHD has any positive influences in your life?
It sure has, but these influences often last for a short period of time. I can be really enthusiastic and I am good at identifying people. This quality makes me a really good friend. Also my creativity is a positive effect of ADHD.
How have you been treated (medication/ psychotherapy)? What are the effects?
For a year and a half I have lived internally in a group especially for adolescents with ADHD and/or autism. Here I followed a training to improve my social abilities, how to engage in relationships with others and to be more independent.
From my 16th I take medication. I have switched a lot and tried different kinds of medication. Much of them did not work well for me, I even tried anti-depressants which made me feel sad. I am currently taking Stratera (short acting) and this works well for me. I don’t take it regularly but only at moments where I think I need it.
Study and intervention
How did you learn about the study?
I am regularly searching the internet to learn more about ADHD. This time I was searching information about comorbidity and neurodiversity and this is how I found your website, by chance.
What motivated you to participate?
It is a good thing that more research is done and I find it important to contribute. The more research is being conducted, the better others with ADHD can be helped. It is of great importance of me to be able to be a part in this. As long as we do not contribute to this kind of research, nothing will chance.
What were your expectations about the study before you started?
To be honest I did not have any expectations because I did not want to be affected by them.
What intervention did you participate in? When?
I participated in the bright light therapy from the 18th of October (2018) until the 10th of January (2019).
What did you like about the intervention? What did you dislike about the intervention?
At the beginning it was kind of hard, I found it really hard to be sitting still half an hour in the morning. Normally I rush through the mornings and do not really sit still at all. My solution was to put the lamp at my nightstand and sit in bed for half an hour in the morning, waking up next to the lamp. You can adjust the brightness of the lamp so I started with dimmed light and increased brightness step by step. Important is to sit upright because otherwise there is a chance of falling back to sleep!
In the beginning I had not realized what an impact this therapy has on your daily life, you really need the motivation to sit through, every day. After some time I got adapted to a new rhythm which made it easier to follow the light therapy for 6 times week. Only on Saturdays I skipped the sessions because of the weekend.
Was the intervention helpful?
It definitely has positive influences. The biggest change I have experienced is the adaptation to a more natural day/night rhythm. I was hoping a side effect would be falling asleep faster but unfortunately this was not the case for me.
The first days I experienced some negative side effects, which are explained in the bright light manual. Maybe it would be better if I had not read the manual because I was so focused on the experience of these side effects. What I felt was a really grumpy mood in the mornings. Luckily it only lasted for a few days.
Are you planning on continuing the intervention?
No, I have no plans of buying a lamp myself. Looking back at the intervention I think I would benefit more by participating in the aerobic exercise intervention, because sitting still for half an hour without a clear purpose is tough. Of course I did adapt to a better and more natural day/night rhythm because of the bright light therapy, but I think this could also be accomplished by going to bed at the same time every day.
Was it difficult/easy to use the App?
Definitely not difficult. The researches informed me about the sensor and how it might be inconvenient in the beginning but I only had to get used to it during the nights. The app was really clear and straight-forward, easy to use. I did forget the phone a few times, making me drive back home, but if you wear pants with pockets this should not be a problem.
Would you recommend other people with ADHD to participate in the study? Why?
I would definitely recommend it to people who are interested in this study and are motivated to participate. You really have to do it because you want it, not only because you want to help others.
Any suggestions/ways that the researchers could improve the experience for people in this study?
In my experience the study is set up well. Sometimes something went wrong (system was not installed right so they had to send me a new set, this set came without a wristband, red.) but the researchers handled it well and professionally. The researchers were cooperative and I liked participating in this study.
Lisa Bos, MSC works at Karakter Child and Youth Psychiatry and Radboud UMC (Nijmegen, the Netherlands) where she works as a researcher for the TRACE project and the PROUD-study. Both studies focus on additional treatments for ADHD and a healthy lifestyle which are also her main interests. She finds importance in studying socially relevant topics and improving the quality of care for ADHD patients.
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