Nutrition: The Missing Ingredient in Mental Health
I have practiced as a psychotherapist and nutritionist for 45 years, and this is what I have learned: where there is mental illness, there is poor diet. Where there is mental illness, there is a long history of digestive problems.
By adding the lens of nutrition, diet, and digestion to your clinical toolbox, you will forever change your approach to client care and enhance the efficacy of all your other methods. Nutrition is the missing link in mental health treatment today.
So what is our role as therapists and other mental health professionals?
Psychoeducating clients
There are different levels at which we may help our clients. I suggest beginning with psychoeducation. This involves making linkages between how and what clients eat and drink, and the effect on their mental wellness.
Exploring food addictions is also within the scope of psychoeducation, along with building relational connections by encouraging mindful eating and engaging family in food gathering and preparation.
In systemic work, psychoeducation might also include educating a family about the role of nutrition in ADHD, or introducing enhancing self-strategies into group therapy for survivors of sexual abuse. At this level, nutrition-as-psychoeducation includes coaching for success, and setting the stage for a deeper exploration that may lead to a collaborative relationship or a referral.
We may also choose to obtain more training. While most therapists don’t prescribe medications, we can take psychopharmacology courses so we know about these medications and how to best advise our clients. Knowing the options a client has, even if we do not carry out intricate nutritional supplementation plans, is a basic skill in this field.
Begin with ‘brainbow foods’
Diets consisting of overly processed foods (such as the refined sugars in fruit juices and
sugary drinks, or highly refined rice, pastas, and flours used in breads and bakery goods) are loaded with chemicals and synthetic preservatives, hormones, antibiotics, and food colorings that are known to alter our mood.
In America we call this the SAD (Standard American Diet) because it makes us sad – it does not provide the nutrients our brain and body need to function well. That some of us survive (though rarely thrive) on a SAD diet is just the luck of the draw. For some people illness comes in childhood or not until middle age, but it comes invariably, just as a car without the right fuel eventually sputters to a stop.
One of the most important influences on mental health resulting from a poor or nutritionally deficient diet is the inflammatory response. Inflammation is now understood by many to be as integral to mental illness, including depression, as to physical illness. Decreasing inflammation is fundamental to healing, and the best way to do this is to eat anti-inflammatory foods and avoid pro-inflammatory foods.
I begin with the concept of ‘brainbow foods’: eat all the colours of the (b)rainbow and you will be sure to ingest the various plant pigments that are nutritional and medicinal.
I guarantee you that, as diet and nutrition improve, so do our client outcomes. The very first step as therapists? Begin with you!
PESI UK will be hosting a free live video webinar with Leslie Korn, Food and Mood: Nutrition Essentials for Mental Health, from 5-6pm on Thursday 26th November. Click here to register for free.
Leslie Korn, PhD, MPH, LMHC, ACS, FNTP, BCTMB, is a renowned integrative medicine clinician and educator specializing in the use of nutritional, herbal and culinary medicine for the treatment of trauma and emotional and chronic physical illness. She is known for her dynamism and humor providing clients effective alternatives to psychotropics. She completed her graduate education in the department of psychiatry and public health at Harvard Medical School and her life training in the jungle of Mexico where she lived and worked alongside local healers for over 25 years. She directed a naturopathic medicine and training clinic facilitating health, culinary and fitness retreats. She is licensed and certified in nutritional therapy, mental health counseling, and bodywork (Polarity and Cranial Sacral and medical massage therapies) and is an approved clinical supervisor. She introduced somatic therapies for complex trauma patients in outpatient psychiatry at Harvard Medical school in 1985 and served Acupuncture and faculty at National College of Naturopathic Medicine.
She is the author of the seminal book on the body and complex trauma: Rhythms of Recovery: Integrative Medicine for PTSD and Complex Trauma, 2nd Edition (Routledge, 2012, 2023); The Brainbow Blueprint: A Clinical Guide to Integrative Medicine and Nutrition for Mental Well Being (PESI, 2023), Nutrition Essentials for Mental Health (W.W. Norton, 2016), Eat Right Feel Right: Over 80 Recipes and Tips to Improve Mood, Sleep, Attention & Focus (PESI, 2017); Multicultural Counseling Workbook: Exercises, Worksheets & Games to Build Rapport with Diverse Clients (PESI, 2015); The Good Mood Kitchen (W.W. Norton, 2017); and Natural Woman: Herbal Remedies for Radiant Health at Every Age and Stage of Life (Shambhala, 2019). She was a founder of the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork, a Fullbright scholar in Herbal Medicine and an NIH-funded scientist, in mind/body medicine. She is an approved clinical supervisor and is the research director at the Center for World Indigenous Studies where she designs culinary and herbal medicine programs with tribal communities engaged in developing integrative medicine programs.
Financial: Dr. Leslie Korn maintains a private practice. She receives a speaking honorarium and recording royalties from PESI, Inc. Dr. Korn receives royalties as a published author. She has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: Dr. Leslie Korn is a member of the Nutritional Therapy Association and Integrative Medicine for the Underserved.
