23 March 2015
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Do computerized brain‑training programs actually improve mental health?
Hello and welcome to the Health Report with me, Norman Swan. Today, do computerized brain training programs work? The answer, at least in part, depends on just that, work. And a lot about how mental health issues that seem very different may be quite similar when you look more deeply at them. It has enormous implications for psychiatric labeling, in other words, diagnosis, as well as treatment and prevention. But let's start with insights from this study of nutrition and our psychological well-being. A huge review of the available evidence into what some are calling nutritional psychiatry has just been published. It delves into the influence what we eat has on our psyche. One of the lead authors was Felice Jaka of Deakin University and the Black Dog Institute.
And I must say, speaking personally, that I've always thought of this as fringe medicine.
Yes, and you wouldn't be the only one.
So you and a group of international colleagues brought together the available evidence. Before we get down to the individual nutrients, the big question I've got is we don't eat individual nutrients. We have a pattern of eating, which might be Asian, Mediterranean or old-fashioned meat and three veg Australian.
Well, I would say that most definitely the evidence is around dietary patterns and diet quality and not around the individual nutrients and supplements. Because as you say, we don't just eat individual nutrients and supplements, taking them out of their context and having them in synthesized form. The evidence base is very preliminary at this point, whereas the evidence base around dietary patterns and mental health is far stronger.
So tell me what that evidence is from your work and others.
We've looked at largely healthy versus unhealthy dietary patterns and we see repeatedly that healthy diets are related to a decreased risk for depression in particular and unhealthy diets, again, quite independently are related to increased risk and probability. Now, importantly, we've seen that right across the age range. So we've seen it in adults, in older adults, very critically, I think, in adolescents, which is the average age of onset for many of these common mental disorders. and also now a strengthening evidence base around the importance of early life nutrition and in utero diet to mental health outcomes in children.
I mean, this is where angels fear to tread scientifically, because people who eat a poor diet, it tends to be a postcode phenomenon. It's about where you live, it's about your level of education, it's about how much money your family's gotten to be able to buy nutritious food. Notoriously in Aboriginal communities, it's expensive to buy fresh food. How do you separate out the two?
You really use statistics to do that. Virtually all of the studies in this area have looked as much as possible at the possible role of socioeconomic status, income, education, etc. And indeed last year, or 2013, we published a study from Australian adults up in the Canberra area that looked at this in really a lot of detail. And while SES and income and education are related to diet quality and obviously also to depression, They're not related as strongly as you might think. And also the point is that it's not just poor or uneducated people that are eating badly. Everybody's eating badly. And the way we eat now has profoundly changed over the last 20 or 30 years. In Australia, for example, less than 10% of the population adhere to the National Healthy Eating Guidelines.
And an unhealthy diet is defined by saturated fat, red meat. I mean, it's like the Asian Mediterranean diet being the opposite of that, where you're eating more white meat, fish and legumes and vegetables and so on. Is that the sort of general categorisation of what you mean by a healthy diet?
Clearly. I mean, as I say, this Western unhealthy diet actually does tend to look more similar across the globe because it's coming from a more similar source, which is industry.
What does nutritional psychiatry reveal about diet patterns and depression risk?
But it doesn't look the same in every country. And certainly red meat is not something that's uniformly seen in the unhealthy diets.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Do computerized brain‑training programs actually improve mental health?
0:00–3:55
2
What does nutritional psychiatry reveal about diet patterns and depression risk?
3:55–7:09
3
How do socioeconomic factors affect the link between diet quality and mental illness?
7:09–11:09
4
Which mental disorders show the strongest connection to unhealthy dietary patterns?
11:09–14:47
5
Can early‑life nutrition and maternal diet influence a child’s future mental health?
14:47–18:54
6
What brain circuit is common across depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder?
18:54–21:53
7
Do working‑memory training programs produce real‑world benefits beyond test scores?
21:53–25:03
8
What should listeners look for when choosing a cognitive‑training app?
25:03–28:20
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