New Study: Serious Mental Illness Improves on Ketogenic Diet

A small study conducted by University of Toulouse psychiatrist Dr. Albert Danan found that a whole-foods ketogenic diet was safe, feasible, and associated with unprecedented improvements in mental and physical health in hospitalized patients with serious mental illness.

The Inspiration for this Study

Dr. Danan is a psychiatrist practicing in Toulouse, France. The population he serves is comprised primarily of people of French and North African descent with serious, persistent mental illness, many of whom also suffer from metabolic illnesses such as obesity, hypertension, and type two diabetes.

After witnessing marked improvement in seizures and autism behaviors in a family member within several weeks of having adopted a ketogenic diet, Dr. Danan became interested in the potential of the diet to improve the psychiatric and metabolic status of his most treatment-resistant patients, regardless of diagnosis. He created a metabolic psychiatry treatment program within his local hospital where patients with chronic mental illness who had exhausted standard psychiatric therapies could attempt a ketogenic diet in a supportive, medically supervised environment.

Ketogenic Diet Protocol

Dr. Danan admitted 31 of his patients with major depression, bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia to the Clinique du Castelviel in Toulouse where they were served a ketogenic diet in lieu of standard hospital fare. The program he implemented limits total carbohydrate intake to a maximum of 20 grams per day, and was based on the ketogenic diet protocol used by Dr. Eric Westman in his metabolic research at Duke University. [A description of the diet is included in the Supplemental Data.]

Results

Symptoms of depression and psychosis improved in all 28 patients who followed the diet for longer than two weeks, with improvements becoming noticeable within three weeks or less. 43% of patients achieved clinical remission, and 64% were discharged from the hospital on less psychiatric medication. Dr. Danan had never witnessed this degree of improvement before in any of these patients—most of whom he had worked with for years or even decades, and all of whom had previously been hospitalized under his care one or more times.

More at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/diagnosis-diet/202207/new-study-serious-mental-illness-improves-ketogenic-diet