Yes, diet impacts mental health. Intake of food deficient in nutrients such as essential vitamins, minerals, and omega-3 fatty acids adversely affects mental health.

Please have a look at these useful RG links.

Article Understanding nutrition, depression and mental illnesses

Article Relationship Between Diet and Mental Health in Children and ...

Article Healthy Diet a Tool to Reduce Anxiety and Depression

Article Frequency of Junk Food and Depression in Children

Article Gut microbiota’s effect on mental health: The gut-brain axis

Yes, diet impacts mental health. Intake of food deficient in nutrients such as essential vitamins, minerals, and omega-3 fatty acids adversely affects mental health.

Please have a look at these useful RG links.

Article Understanding nutrition, depression and mental illnesses

Article Relationship Between Diet and Mental Health in Children and ...

Article Healthy Diet a Tool to Reduce Anxiety and Depression

Article Frequency of Junk Food and Depression in Children

Article Gut microbiota’s effect on mental health: The gut-brain axis

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best regards

Very true. There's an adage: your mind

/thinking depends upon what you eat.

It's rightly said that deficiency of essential amino acids, Omega 3 essential fatty acids have adverse effects on mental faculties. Even deficiency of iron and iodine can lead to decrease in IQ . So there's need to have good healthy balance diet/nutrition. Nutrition doesn't mean to satisfy the appetite in terms of quantity but it's the quality which is most important like deficiency of vitamins like B 12 can have its effects on brain. So the balance nutrition should have all essential nutrients in equitable proportions like carbohydrates, proteins, fats, minerals and vitamins. Certain trace elements like zinc also essential in balance nutrition.

Numerous nutrition factors affect mental health, see links:

Article Understanding nutrition, depression and mental illnesses

Article Nutrition and Depression: Implications for Improving Mental ...

Article The role of diet and nutrition on mental health and wellbeing

Article Nutritional Factors Affecting Mental Health:

There is research to suggest that what we eat may affect not just our physical health, but also our mental health and wellbeing.

"Traditionally, we haven't been trained to ask about food and nutrition," says psychiatrist Drew Ramsey, MD, an assistant clinical professor at Columbia University. "But diet is potentially the most powerful intervention we have. By helping people shape their diets, we can improve their mental health and decrease their risk of psychiatric disorders."

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Thanks

Thank you all, especially for the research links, very helpful. However, I want to push it a bit further and elaborate the question; do you think or observe a difference between vegan/vegetarian/omnivore diets and mental health ?

Thanx again

Kindly see these useful links.

Article Vegetarian diets are associated with healthy mood states: A ...

http://www.alliedacademies.org/articles/vegetarian-diet-a-preventive-for-mental-diseases.pdf

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/1476830514Y.0000000164?hootPostID=4369594bca0764ea016075906ba61316&journalCode=ynns20

lThink about it. Your brain is always “on.” It takes care of your thoughts and movements, your breathing and heartbeat, your senses — it works hard 24/7, even while you’re asleep. This means your brain requires a constant supply of fuel. That “fuel” comes from the foods you eat — and what’s in that fuel makes all the difference. Put simply, what you eat directly affects the structure and function of your brain and, ultimately, your mood.

There is much research work to do in this new area, but considering that poor diet is now the leading killer globally and mental disorders account for the largest burden of global disability, the fact that diet appears to play a role in mental as well as physical health (as well as dementia) must be taken very seriously.

Your diet can interact with the medication you get for e.g. depression.

Interesting question, Most interactions are reciprocated by signals in intersecting and contrasting pathways. Balanced food leads to a good immune system and high resistance to all diseases

Surely it does

I agree with the information that support the importance of diet to health and mental condition. Indeed this is complicated by the issue that most main stream physicians are little preparation and interest in nutrition and diet. As Beatrice has noted that diet can interact with medications information is increasingly pointing to widespread interaction of medications with health issues themselves. Iatrogenic disease is when the treatment causes issues and as a pill based model of medicine becomes more and more dominant many of the aging population suffer from drug interactions. On the the other hand nutritional health is pretty alarming at least 1 billion with insufficient calories and another 1 billion with clinical obesity. In terms of promoting health it would appear to me that addressing malnourishment is the first recourse and not an after thought or something not even on the agenda. When people are well fed the issues of mood are improved. A huge advantage of stressing and optimizing both food and fitness is that is incredibly more cost effective than drugs and is at a small fraction of the cost of drugs. We are what we eat and the majority of world diets are woefully inadequate and/or greatly imbalanced. Part of the solution to the problem is focusing on health rather than a symptomatic disease treatment approach. Governments need to become aware of their ability to give nutrition and fitness priority in the education system. The world cannot afford the way we have been addressing disease and we need to change our perspective to get a hold on the underlying issues.

Hi.

Diet stricto sensu is not the only way to think about relations between eating and well being (call it mental health). What I mean is that social and cultural context surrounding daily food consumption, the context of meals the preparation and consumption of these which encompass emotions and feeling of social inclusion (or not), have a great impact on one's well being and let say "cultural safety". Now, this is not well documented but I have been encountering these phenomena for a while now, but all this is very qualitative. Answers could be found in thinking of food in manners of care, nurturance, hedonic pleasure, significations, cultural fitness.

For more on this topic:

Rozin, P. (2005). The meaning of food in our lives: a cross-cultural perspective on eating and well-being. Journal of nutrition education and behavior, 37, S107-S112.

Brown, K. W., & Ryan, R. M. (2003). The benefits of being present: mindfulness and its role in psychological well-being. Journal of personality and social psychology, 84(4), 822.

Block, L. G., Grier, S. A., Childers, T. L., Davis, B., Ebert, J. E., Kumanyika, S., ... & Pettigrew, S. (2011). From nutrients to nurturance: A conceptual introduction to food well-being. Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 30(1), 5-13.

Meltem İdiğ-Çamuroğlu

Diet is a one of the important Lifestyle environmental factor.

The Epigenetic signatures[DNA methylation, Histone modification and non coding RNA(Small/Long) regulation] modified due environmental factors especially diet.

Diabetes is a metabolic disorder and environmental factors crucial role to cause disease including diabetes.

Environmental factor also modify Epigentic signatures leads to disease including diabetes.

Lifestyle modification ----> leads to increase global health burden -----> leads to increase mental disorder.

So here recent metabolic disease and depression prevalence compared

Diabetes prevalence vs Depression prevalence:

WORLD [ 425 million] vs WORLD [322 million]

South East Asia [82 million 2017] vs South East Asia [85.67 million]

Western Pacific [159 million 2017] vs Western pacific Region[66.21 million]

Aftrica [16 million 2017] vs Africa region [ 55.98 million]

America [30.2 million] vs America [48.16 million]

Europe [58 million] vs European region [40.27 million]

Reference:

[IDF, 8TH EDITION, 2017]

https://www.idf.org/e-library/epidemiology-research/diabetes-atlas/134-idf-diabetes-atlas-8th-edition.html

[WHO, Report 2017] http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/254610/WHO-MSD-MER-2017.2-eng.pdf

Sincerely

prabu

Hi again.

One reference was not good, The Brown and Ryan one. I wanted to refer to this one:

Eisenberg, M. E., Olson, R. E., Neumark-Sztainer, D., Story, M., & Bearinger, L. H. (2004). Correlations between family meals and psychosocial well-being among adolescents. Archives of pediatrics & adolescent medicine, 158(8), 792-796.

Certainly yes

A fairly simple example is the situation that many Americans find themselves in. They eat a sugar boosting meal or treat, and then about 40 minutes later, after their blood sugar has risen, insulin created (in too great an amount), they move into a hypoglycemic state. While their blood sugar is low, they are unable to take up tryptophan sufficiently and thus they do not produce enough serotonin. This lack of serotonin is a classic cause of depression. The new idea of being "hangry" is part of this. If we eat a sweet treat, our blood sugar rises and we very quickly feel better.

Thank you all, for different perspectives and research links. Actually, what we eat is not a totally personal choice, I think. What is available to us is determined by many factors . On the other hand, form a broader perspective, when we talk about food, it inevitably comes to environment issues. Dont you think so?

So, as a result of this discussion, should we start asking to our psychotherapy clients about their diet? What do you think?

Best!

I think yes.

I agreed to Dr Arvind Singh & Dr. Nihada Ahmetovic

A good diet gives good health and if body is healthy and disease free then definitely mind will be healthy. Our diet provides adequate amounts of complex carbohydrates, essential fats, amino acids, vitamins and minerals and water.

Of course, if, in the first instance, by change in metabolism, we see the case of obesity, to change the biochemical modulators of digestion and anxiety. Secondly, for aesthetics, we see that is the most affected, obesity many times, leads to depression.

Yes, diet affects mental health

Of course Yes.

I think ...There is research to suggest that what we eat may affect not just our physical health, but also our mental health and wellbeing.

yes, there are some studies in bipolar disorder and lower levels of micronutrients

Our diet to have the relation with the healthy mind & body. According to the nature of your body & health requirement we should keep & maintain our diet accordingly so that we may not become victim of our health problems

This is my personal opinion

yes

The immunity of the human body is integrated. Any imbalance in food leads to different future reflexes on different organs

Your idea must be a reality and thanks for sharing!

How can the international society do nothing to alleviate the famine presently in Venezuela and Yemen when we know the lack of proper food will literally destroy their mental and physical lives? Someone should stir up the UN for action.

Thank you everybody, for your contributions. Thank you Michael Issigonis and Pedro Contreras for indicating the social and political issues in diet.

Best

We know that there is a link between food, mental health and mental state, especially depression ... Although there is not enough evidence yet to recommend changing care for patients with depression, these preliminary studies provide support for the idea of reducing the risk of depression using a system Healthy food. Some preliminary studies suggest that diet may be successful as an intervention to treat depression as well

Of course, the daily nutrition intake is the principal energy source of our bodies. It also is the principal way to obtain certain particles to recycle them for our necessities.