Page 45 - Complementary and Alternative Medicine Treatments in Psychiatry

Nutritional Treatments in Psychiatry | 45

4. Nutritional Treatments in Psychiatry

Garry Vickar, Dan Stradford

The use of nutritional supplements in psychiatry has had a
controversial history. It is the experience of most psychiatrists
that powerful medications are commonly needed to curb
psychotic behavior, manic episodes, suicidality, and other
dramatic manifestations they are asked to treat. It hardly seems
reasonable that a vitamin or mineral would have much beneficial
effect. The usual response of most phsicians, when asked about
nutritional supplements, is that they likely won’t help but they
probably won’t hurt.
But as studies now show, there is a place for nutritional
treatments in mental health treatment. Some patients, due to
poor diets or metabolic abnormalities, have unusually high
needs for some nutrients—biochemicals that are required for
normal physiological function. Supplementation can sometimes
fully or partially restore neurological activity that has gone
awry. Additionally, some supplements—as lithium has for
decades—have a palliative effect on symptoms and, in moderate
doses, can improve the patient’s condition with few or no side
effects.