E43: B Vitamins and Why They Are Important for Mental Health

Today we continue our journey through complementary medicine and its impact on depression. Last time I talked about herbal treatments, and today I will start off a short series on vitamins and minerals. On today's episode I'll briefly talk about vitamins in general and then I'll focus on the B vitamins most important for mental health, B12 and folate. I'll talk about why they are so important, how one could become deficient in them, how to check for that, and what to do about it. Many of your patients are probably taking vitamins and thinking they are helping them, so I think it's critical we know as much about them as possible so that we can counsel patients and actual prescribe them when they are actually needed!