Mental health researchers Bonnie Kaplan and Julia Rucklidge, who specialize in studying the connection between nutrition and mental health, recently wrote an article asking if we are finally at the tipping point—when an idea starts to become contagious—for nutrition and mental health.
Their writing comes on the heels of 4 recent articles exploring nutrition and mental health:
- Diet may be as important to mental health as it is to physical health (Huffington Post)
- Nutritional Medicine as Mainstream in Psychiatry: A Consensus Position Statement from The International Society for Nutritional Psychiatry Research (Lancet Psychiatry)
- The Emerging Field of Nutritional Mental Health (Clinical Psychological Science)
- Scientific Report of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (Office of Disease
Prevention and Health Promotion)
Even if we are at the tipping point, Kaplan and Rucklidge express concern that our current healthcare system cannot cope with an influx of people who demand nutritional therapies for treating mental health issues.
“. . . people often stop taking their nutrients even when those nutrients had successfully treated challenging psychiatric symptoms. . . . Why? Cost, of course. Often they switched to medications as those are subsidized or covered by insurance whereas the nutrients are not. The issue isn’t that there is no money available through the public system, it’s just that money needs to be redirected within a system that is driven largely by the pharmaceutical industry.
They go on to explain that Canadian and American health insurance plans don’t cover micronutrient formulas for treating mental health.
In Alberta, Bonnie and others have tried for years to get the provincial health care system to put micronutrient formulas on the ‘formulary list,’ which would enable doctors to prescribe them for mental health and people to obtain them at no (or little) cost. To the best of our knowledge, there is no insurance system in the U.S. that will cover the cost of a nutrient formula for mental health (there are some individual nutrients such as folic acid that are covered for heart health). What we need is for people to be able to afford better food and nutrient supplements as needed.
In addition, some natural health products on the market are inferior, having ingredients not found on the label or missing ingredients entirely that are on the label. More must be done to not only make access affordable, but also to make sure the public has access to quality products.
So, are we at the tipping point? Perhaps. But there is still so much work yet to do.