CS04-02 - Overall diet and risk of depression

• Published in: European psychiatry Vol. 27; p. 1
• Main Author: Akbaraly, T
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier SAS 2012
• Subjects: Internal Medicine; Psychiatry
• ISSN: 0924-9338; 1778-3585
• DOI: 10.1016/S0924-9338(12)74069-5

The impact of specific nutrients in the physiopathological pathways leading to depression [1] combined with the fact that diet is modifiable has emphasized the importance of research on the possible role of dietary factors into depression and depressive symptoms. Although a potential beneficial effect of some nutrients on a depression process may exist, focusing on individual nutrients or food may provide an incomplete picture of the relationship between diet and depressive symptomatology at least because the effect of single nutrient may be too small to be detected but also because meals consist of complex combinations of nutrients which interact with each other. The development of nutritional epidemiology methods[2] to assess overall diet were recently applied to depression. Our team previously showed an association between overall diet measured by dietary patterns and subsequent depressive symptoms [3] independently of other health behaviours. Since then, several other studies comfort this finding in adolescents [4, 5] and in adults [6–10]. The aim of this lecture is to present this literature and to discuss the impact of these studies in light of the potential causal inference of diet on depressive symptoms.