Can nutrients treat mental illness?

Canterbury: Nutrients may be able to treat ADHD, bipolar disorder, anxiety, stress and PTSD according to University of Canterbury (UC) Professor Julia Rucklidge, who will speak at a public lecture in Christchurch this Wednesday. Professor Rucklidge will discuss data that shows an alarming picture of food choices serving as risk factors for all kinds of psychiatric problems. Her talk entitled ‘What if…..nutrients could treat mental illness?’ will challenge current treatment regimes for mental disorders and suggest an alternative course of action.

Taking the concept of “you are what you eat” to its extreme, Professor Rucklidge will show that rates of mental illness are on the rise despite the advent of medications and other therapies over the last 50 years. She will discuss how scientists have been uncovering an uncomfortable truth: What we eat is affecting our mental health.
Professor Rucklidge’s interests in nutrition and mental illness grew out of her own research showing poor outcomes for children with significant psychiatric illness. In the last decade, she has run clinical trials investigating the role of broad-spectrum micronutrients in the expression of mental illness, including PTSD associated with the Canterbury earthquakes.