Diet and mental health

Intervening on health-risk behaviours, with a focus on people with mental illness

We have developed and tested interventions for the general population, but there is evidence that people with mental illnesses are not being offered and not achieving the same benefit from these programmes as the rest of the population. We are working to change that. We are developing interventions that aim to change the joint risk factor that explains why people develop mental illness and why they struggle to change their behaviour. By aiming to change the fundamental causes, we will assess whether these increase the effectiveness of behavioural interventions in this group of people.

• We are testing the effect of a ketogenic diet to treat treatment resistant depression. This diet can improve co-occurring metabolic disease, such as diabetes or MAFLD.
• We have investigated the effectiveness of probiotics and prebiotics on depression, which aim to change the microbiome and can improve metabolic complications.