Food and Mood: Improving Mental Health Through Diet and Nutrition

Learn how healthy dietary choices can improve your mental and brain health

Poor diet and poor mental health are the leading causes of mortality and morbidity worldwide. We now know that diet quality is a modifiable factor that is linked to mental and brain health across all stages of our lives.

We will explore how our daily diets may affect our mental and brain health, including the role of our immune system and gut microbiome.

The course will provide research evidence, practical examples, skills development, and collaboration on dietary intake assessment, strategies and resource sharing for dietary change.

This course is designed for anyone with an interest, or with experience of, good or bad mental health.

This is an introductory course which might be of interest to healthcare practitioners working with people with mental and brain health issues or in roles related to diet, nutrition and mental and brain health education.

• Diet and nutrition in mental and brain health
• Welcome to Food and Mood
• Defining diet and mental health
• Why we eat what we eat
• Weekly wrap up
• Understanding the mechanisms
• Welcome to Week 2
• Mechanisms of action
• Dietary intake and gut health: what is the evidence?
• Weekly wrap up
• Changing the diet to manage mental health
• Welcome to Week 3
• Modified Mediterranean diet for mental and brain health
• Planning and implementing dietary change
• Course wrap up