11: Nutritional psychiatry explains how food can help fix your brain | Dr. Felice Jacka, PhD.

Professor Felice Jacka is Director of the Food & Mood Centre at Deakin University and an international leader in the transformative field of Nutritional Psychiatry research. She is also founder and president of the International Society for Nutritional Psychiatry Research (ISNPR) and immediate past president of the Australian Alliance for the Prevention of Mental Disorders. She has been responsible for the development of a highly innovative field of research establishing diet and nutrition as of importance to common mental disorders. These include the first studies to document a role for diet in adolescent depression, the first study to identify both maternal and early life nutrition as important predictors of children’s mental health, and the first trial to show that dietary improvement can address depression. The results of the studies she has conducted have been highly influentialProfessor Jacka’s current research focuses closely on the links between diet, gut health, and mental and brain health. Professor Jacka has published >160 peer-reviewed scientific papers, the majority in high-impact journals in the mental health field including the American Journal of Psychiatry, BMC Medicine and Lancet Psychiatry. She is listed in the top ten most highly-cited researchers in mood disorders in Australia (Scopus).She has written a book for the lay public called ‘Brain Changer’, which we HIGHLY recommend. She is also passionate about prompting changes by policy-makers to improve the global food environment.