'You are what you eat.' It’s an age-old expression, but what does the science say?
Deakin’s pioneering Food and Mood Centre, led by Professor Felice Jacka OAM, is uncovering the incredible, complex connections between nutrition and mental health. Professor Jacka draws on her own experiences as an adolescent experiencing anxiety and depression, to inform her world-leading research today.
‘Like many people, I love food and cooking, and I was always very interested in how food, as our fundamental petrol that drives all the aspects of our bodies and brains’ functioning – how that might intersect with psychiatric disorders,’ Professor Jacka explains.
Professor Jacka initially studied fine art, before undertaking further studies in psychology. Mentored by eminent scientist Professor Michael Berk, Professor Jacka discovered a new passion for research. Armed with this motivation and support, she secured a PhD scholarship to undertake a landmark study of people's diets and how these linked to their clinical depressive and anxiety disorders.
'It ended up being published on the front cover of the American Journal of Psychiatry, which was a pretty big deal,' says Professor Jacka. 'And that was because it was the first study to really look at food in relation to these clinical mental disorders and make that connection.'
Initially, her work was met with some opposition.
A lot of my peers were very, very sceptical at the start of the research. That was something that I took on the chin and just made me more determined to do high-quality science, so that anything that we did could be held up to the light and scrutinised and we could have some faith in it.
Professor Felice Jacka OAM, Alfred Deakin Professor
Co-director of the Food and Mood Centre
‘That's continued to be my overarching goal – to develop not just the evidence base, but the very best quality evidence base that we can,' Professor Jacka explains.
That’s where Deakin’s Food and Mood Centre comes in. Founded by Professor Jacka in 2017, it’s the only research centre of its kind in the world focusing on nutritional psychiatry. More than 20 projects are currently underway, including examining the role of nutrition in depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease, eating disorders and even multiple sclerosis.
The centre has been successful in gaining large, highly competitive government funding. Philanthropic support from the Wilson Foundation and other valued partners has provided a vital kickstart to further generate additional funding opportunities.
'The philanthropic support that we've received has been absolutely fundamental in giving us the money that we've needed to generate pilot data, which are now informing large grant applications.’
Our research in nutritional psychiatry has really shifted some paradigms. It has had a major international influence in terms of informing the public via the media. It's now manifesting in changes to clinical guidelines in psychiatry from the peak psychiatric bodies, to changes and recommendations in policy documents.'
Translating research so that clinicians can better treat their patients is a key part of the Food and Mood Centre’s remit. Doctors and psychiatrists generally receive very, very little training in nutrition during their entire medical training,' Professor Jacka explains.
The most recent Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists' clinical guidelines for how we treat people with mood disorders – so that's depressive and bipolar disorders – now puts diet alongside exercise and smoking and sleep as the foundations of treatment. So, it says before you do anything else, you need to support your patients to achieve a healthy diet.
Professor Felice Jacka OAM, Alfred Deakin Professor
Co-director of the Food and Mood Centre
‘Now that's very easy to say in a clinical guideline, but unless the physicians are actually trained in what the evidence base says, and how you might make those recommendations to patients so that they have the benefit and they can actually make those changes to their lifestyle behaviours, there's going to be this big gap.'
Professor Jacka and her colleagues at the Food and Mood Centre are working hard to bridge this 'translation gap.'
Philanthropic funding has allowed the Centre to create a role focused on education and training. The open access online training course for the public. 'Food and Mood: Improving Mental Health Through Diet and Nutrition' has already enrolled more than 70,000 people from 170 countries and counting.
Funding support is now enabling the development of accredited training in nutritional psychiatry and its application, for psychiatrists, general practitioners, dietitians, and other health practitioners and services. It is hoped that further philanthropic support can be secured to fund programs in both primary and high schools.
The Food and Mood Centre have also been leading the development of clinical guidelines for the use of lifestyle medicine in mental health treatment. This is part of a joint international taskforce, supported by philanthropic funding from Wilson Foundation. These important guidelines, published in 2022, provide an essential resource for the application of lifestyle medicine in psychiatry across the globe.
Interested in finding out more?
The Food and Mood Centre at Deakin University is a world-leading, multi-disciplinary research centre that aims to understand the complex ways in which what we eat influences our brain, mood and mental health.
Another critically important study supported by philanthropy, currently underway, is developing the initial evidence for fecal microbial transplants (poo transplants) for people with clinical depression. The results will then allow for funding applications to competitive grant funding bodies for a full-scale trial. It is hoped that this may result in a new treatment for depression, which is one of the leading causes of disability globally.
Having marked five years of operation, and achieved incredible growth in this time, Professor Jacka is positive about the Centre’s future.
'My particular focus is growing, mentoring and supervising the next generation of nutritional psychiatry researchers. And I take that role very seriously and I also enjoy it enormously,' Professor Jacka says.
'We have at least 20 different projects underway, and I wouldn't be able to tell you which one I thought was more important than another – they all hold the potential to be life-changing for patients living with a wide range of serious mental and brain disorders.'
For more information on Professor Jacka’s projects, visit Deakin’s Food and Mood Centre.