The Impact of Diet On Mental Health
| Published date | 01 December 2006 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/13619322200600037 |
| Pages | 19-22 |
| Date | 01 December 2006 |
| Author | Andrew McCulloch,Iain Ryrie |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care |
The Impact of Diet
On Mental Health
Andrew McCulloch
Chief Executive
Mental Health Foundation
Iain Ryrie
Director, Mental Health Research
Mental Health Foundation
Focus on…
nwatching diseases, both in private houses
and public hospitals, the thing that strikes the
experienced observer most forcibly is this, that the
symptoms and sufferings generally considered to be
inevitable and incident to the disease are very often
not symptoms of the disease at all, but of something
quite different – of the want of fresh air, or of light,
or of warmth, or of quiet, or of cleanliness, or of
punctuality and care in the administration of diet,
of each or all of these.’ (Nightingale, 1860,
reprinted 1969)
The profound relationship between diet and health
(physical and mental) has been remarked on since
ancient times. Greek and Chinese medicine, for
example, both posit interrelationships between diet
and the processing of nutrients and mood, wellbeing,
temperament and mental disorder, all mediated by
biological and familial factors. A breakdown in a
normative relationship with food has also been
associated with mental illness; for example, in Daniel
4 v33: ‘That very hour the word was fulfilled concerning
Nebuchadnezzar; he was driven from men and ate grass like
oxen…’
In terms of the development of modernhealth care
diet has remained important but we have perhaps lost
the sense of the centrality of nutrition to human health
and wellbeing. Specifically we seem to have lost any
sense that diet may be closely related to mental health.
In response to this deficit, the Mental Health
Foundation, working in partnership with Sustain, the
alliance for better food and farming, recently published
the report Feeding Minds (Mental Health Foundation,
2006). This article is largely based upon this work but
sets it in context and seeks to explore the background
and the policy and practice implications of the work.
Mental health
Readers of this journal will be familiar with various
definitions of mental health. For the purposes of
this work it is important simply to give a broad
sense of what is meant by mental health so that we
are clear what is being affected by diet and our
relationship with food. For these purposes it is
assumed that good mental health is displayed by
sound cognitive, emotional and perceptual
functioning. While not taking a reductionist
approach it is assumed that a healthy brain and
nervous system arethe platformfor good mental
health and that at least some of the effects of diet
(good or bad) on mental health will be mediated by
the effects of nutrients on the brain. However, there
may also be indirect effects via social and
psychological mechanisms.
The major influences on mental health are well
understood. The Mental Health Foundation focuses
its efforts around 10 major factors (Table 1). Many
of these factors are also influences on physical
health for a variety of reasons, including,
fundamentally,the interdependence of the central
nervous system (CNS), cardiovascular and
endocrine systems. This interdependence
presumably reflects observed correlations – for
example, between cardiovascular disease,
depression and type II diabetes. Of these ten,
diet is one of the less well understood because of
the dearth of thinking and gold standard research
on this issue during the 20th century. However,
this evidence base is growing.
The Mental Health Review Volume 11 Issue 4 December 2006 ©Pavilion Jour nals (Brighton) Limited 2006 19
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