Nutrition and Mental Health Part 1 — The mental health crisis

In order to understand how this started, I will probably write a series of blog posts related to nutrition, mental health, and how they are connected. This is the introductory post, and I will talk about the current mental health crisis.

Is there a mental health crisis? Let’s see some numbers, mental illness prevalence, how many people were affected by poor mental health, and the statistics are surprising, before the year 1750 we got 1 case in 10000 people, and this number tripled by 1960 to 3 cases in 10000 people. And then something happened, as now (by now I mean 2020) we have 2000 (two thousand) cases in 10000 (ten thousand) people. This is as much as one case in every 5 people. And there is more, as poor mental health is not affecting only the individual, but also their family and friends.

Mental health diagnosis is growing quickly and current treatments are not enough. Not all people get well with conventional treatment. The current solution is using the medication as the main frontline treatment, to manage the illness (especially in Western society). Conventional treatment helps a bit to manage the condition but did not solve the problem.