A recent article in The Economist1 noted that the negative economic impact of depressive illness is anticipated to come second only to that of severe cardiac and vascular disease in the early twenty-first century. The costs of decreased productivity due to lost working hours are expected to be enormous even before expensive tertiary treatment of these disorders is accounted for. The lack of funds in the health-care sector, especially in our country, has caused a move towards primary and preventative care.
Educational strategies are already in place to motivate the public to adopt more healthy lifestyles.
The role of diet in this regard is obvious. Researchers are now questioning whether dietary manipulation may confer prophylactic protection in affective illness and thereby decrease the risk of developing a full-blown disorder, with its attendant personal and social consequences. The existing large body of research in this field lends support to the hypothesis that diet does indeed impact on mood. The purpose of this article is to review and summarise the findings of this research. Current theories of the aetiology of depressive illness implicate impaired monoaminergic activity in the brain.