How to Boost Mental Health Through Better Nutrition

• Healthy living for mental well-being, New research, Patients and Families

The relationship between nutrition and mental health is bidirectional: the foods we eat affect our mental health, and our mental health status affects what and how well we eat. This month, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and the American Society for Nutrition (ASN) are partnering to highlight the interconnectedness of nutrition and mental health. To learn more about how the public views diet and mental health, APA conducted a poll between March 16 and 17, 2023, among a sample of 2,200 adults.

Addressing the Public Mental Health Challenge of Climate Change

• By Katherine Catalano, Elizabeth Haase, M.D.
• Patients and Families, Public awareness, Trauma

For most Americans, the face of climate change is extreme weather and natural disasters. More than 40% of Americans live in a county impacted by a major natural disaster in the last year. In the last seven years, natural disasters cost the United States more than a trillion dollars in damage and more than 5,000 lives were lost.

Helping Patients Cope with Emotional Reactions to Climate Change: Advice for Mental Health Clinicians

• By Elizabeth Haase, M.D.
• APA Leadership, Treatment

Climate change is not easy for the human mind to understand. It has qualities, like its enormous scale, complexity and uncertainty, that make it hard to comprehend. Greenhouse gases are invisible, and what is happening on one part of the planet is not happening on another: you can’t “see” it.

Air Pollution’s Impact on Mental Health

• Patients and Families, Teens and young adults

Air pollution is a major environmental health risk — the links between air pollution and health conditions such as respiratory and cardiovascular diseases are well established. Though less well-understood, there is substantial evidence that air pollution also impacts mental health.

New Research Points to Disparities in Autism Prevalence and Access to Care

New research based on data from CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network found that among 8-year-old children, 1 in 36 were identified with autism spectrum disorder in 2020. This is an increase from 1 in 54 in 2016.