Harvard Psychiatrist REVEALS We Have Been Treating Mental Illness All WRONG
In a Nutshell
Harvard psychiatrist Chris Palmer argues that mental illnesses like depression, bipolar, and schizophrenia are primarily metabolic disorders driven by poor diet and ultraprocessed foods containing thousands of untested chemicals. Standard psychiatric medications fail most patients because they ignore root metabolic dysfunction, while ketogenic diets and other metabolic interventions have produced remission in severe cases where drugs did not. The core solution is eating real whole foods, as 93% of Americans show metabolic abnormalities that directly impair brain function.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Most psychiatrists or neuroscientists will say there's no way that what we eat would play a role in something like depression, bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia. When you actually start to pull back the curtain, it's horrifying.
How's my mood? How's my anxiety? How's my ability to sleep? Any of those things should be at least warning signs that you may have impaired metabolism somehow or another impacting your brain.
Chris recently addressed the Senate. The overarching theme of that roundtable discussion was that here in the United States and actually throughout the world we have an ever-increasing chronic disease epidemic. So many people focus on the epidemics of obesity and diabetes and there's no doubt that those are skyrocketing in prevalence. The presentation represented the mental health epidemic that is occurring concurrently.
Physical health and mental health cannot be separated, although many people want to. As rates of obesity and diabetes escalate, there are escalating rates of a broad range of mental illnesses, neurodevelopmental conditions, mental health conditions, and mental disorders.
Escalating rates include autism, ADHD, anxiety disorders, depression, bipolar disorder, substance use disorders, and eating disorders. It's across the board, across a wide range of diagnoses.
What we're doing to address these chronic diseases isn't working. A paradigm shift is needed.
Social media and the advancement of technology have some responsibility. Lack of movement, lack of connection, and isolation have partly a responsibility.
The same factors that can play a role in obesity can also play a role in mental health. The one that gets overlooked most often is the role of diet or nutrition.
If you talk to most psychiatrists or neuroscientists and ask them does diet play a role in mental health, most of them will say probably not. They believe the brain is just a really complicated organ and there's no way that what we eat or nutrition would play a role in something like ADHD or even depression and certainly not something like bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.
By and large, most people in the mental health field believe that those are either genetic biological disorders or they are largely due to psychological and social factors, trauma, stress, social adversity, and that those are the causes. People leave out what we're putting into our mouth every day that actually becomes our brain, becomes the neurotransmitters, influences the way every cell in our body functions.
Researchers have been struggling for decades, actually over a century, to figure out what exactly causes mental illness. Numerous lines of evidence have all converged on metabolism or metabolic dysfunction in cells appearing again and again across a wide range of mental health conditions.
Those same metabolic biomarkers or studies come up for things like obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. People with those metabolic disorders are more likely to have mental health conditions and people with mental health conditions are more likely to have metabolic disorders.
Most people when they hear the word metabolism usually think about burning calories and they think that's what it is. It's just the rate at which we burn calories and that plays a significant role in whether we are fat or thin.
Athletes have a slightly more sophisticated understanding of metabolism. They're into VO2 max and some other metrics of metabolism and that might make them stronger or faster or have greater endurance.
Metabolism is related to burning calories. It is related to athletic performance. But it is so much more than that. A simple way to think about it is it's this foundational process that living organisms use to convert food into energy or building blocks to maintain or grow our cells. From a biological stance, it's foundational in the definition of a living organism.
Nutrition plays a foundational role in metabolism. How could it not be related to mental illness?
Most people don't have a problem thinking that diet might play a role in mild anxiety or mild depression. A lot of parents aren't too surprised that diet or nutrition might play a role in ADHD, for example, because of all that sugar and processed foods and artificial dyes in our food supply.
This applies to severe crippling mental illnesses, including things like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. They're all interrelated and they all relate to metabolism.
Processed foods and genetically modified foods contain substances that raise serious concerns. Standards of the FDA versus some of the standards in the UK are different, with the UK having higher standards.
A lot of people will think that the conversation sounds like a conspiracy theory. They believe the government is looking out for us and the Food and Drug Administration is ensuring that our food is safe. They assume everything put in food is safe and has been thoroughly and rigorously tested.
A journal article that just appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine was about the lax oversight of chemicals and food additives in the food supply in the United States.
About 2 years ago there was an artificial ingredient called terra flour. They added this to a new product, a beef substitute. Over 400 people around the United States were hospitalized, many of them with liver failure because of this product.
The FDA began an investigation when they started recognizing a lot of people who are eating this food are getting sick. They looked for bacterial infections or contamination. They looked for lead poisoning or mercury or some contaminant in the food. They couldn't find anything.
They came across terra flour and asked the manufacturer what it was. The manufacturer said that's a new thing that we just added.
The manufacturer was allowed to declare for themselves that it was safe. The FDA doesn't rigorously test these new chemicals that get added to our food. They rely on the manufacturers. It's an honor system right now in the United States.
Manufacturers are not absolutely required to rigorously test new chemicals. Instead, they can simply declare that we consider this generally recognized as safe or GRAS with no requirement of proof that it in fact is safe.
About 10,000 chemicals are in the US food supply and many of them have not been rigorously tested for safety, like liver failure safety. Let alone what impact do these molecules have on human metabolism or the human brain. We don't know. No one knows because nobody's bothered to ask that question and nobody's bothered to do the research.
This becomes a likely culprit in the chronic disease epidemic that we're allowing manufacturers to just put all sorts of stuff into our food without testing it.
People naturally take responsibility and think they need to be better or lose weight or build muscle, but it almost seems like the system is set up against them. We've been conditioned and hardwired since we've been young eating these products.
In most cases, almost all cases, it's not their fault. They were children at some point and their parents were feeding them what they thought was healthy food and what they were being told by the US dietary guideline committee are healthy foods.
The US dietary guidelines to date don't mention ultraprocessed foods. They don't mention all of these artificial ingredients because the assumption is they don't matter. The assumption is just make sure you get enough calories. Try to minimize saturated fat. Maybe minimize sugar somewhat. Less than 10% of your calories from sugar, which is still a lot.
They don't even mention the impact of these other substances on human health.
There is now more than ample evidence including epidemiological evidence, basic science evidence, and animal studies, all sorts of things, numerous lines of evidence to all support this conclusion that these foods are bad for us.
These foods affect human health broadly. They play a role in overweight or obesity. They play a role in heart disease. They play a role in diabetes and blood sugars.
The brain is the tricky thing. In the same way that eating these foods or too much of these foods can drive your heart to actually become pathologically compromised to the point of you potentially having a heart attack, it can cause your liver to fill up with fat which impairs its function. It can cause kidney problems. It can cause immune system dysfunction.
When the brain malfunctions, it's usually subtle. It starts for most people in the form of things like brain fog or a lack of motivation or depressed mood or mild anxiety symptoms or inattention.
Those are the types of things that most people experience and those are ubiquitous symptoms today in society. We have record rates of burnout. Most people would never even associate burnout with their metabolic health, let alone with what they're putting into their mouth every day.
Many of us are overworked. Many of us are going 24/7. Many of our bosses now expect us to respond to emails at midnight because there's a crisis at work. That is extraordinarily stressful and absolutely playing a role in burnout.
So too is the actual physical health of our brain. Numerous people who have changed their diet or begun exercising or prioritized sleep or taken themselves off of their screen for so much and their burnout evaporates. Their work situation doesn't change one bit, but their tolerance for it changes immensely.
They go from somebody who feels like, "I can't keep up. I can't keep up. I'm never good enough. I just can't do this much work. They're being too hard on me." To, "Why was I so stressed by this? This actually isn't that difficult. I'm resilient. I'm smart. I'm efficient. My brain is on fire. My brain is like, I just got that report done in one hour and two months ago it took me two days to do that report. No wonder I was so burned out. Took me two days to do the report when it really should have only taken me an hour to do it."
When you bring people's brains back online, a whole new world opens up.
It is very unlikely there will be a day soon enough that our workload will diminish. Waiting for that day for work to reduce and the workload to go down is what stresses us out.
When you work on all these things your tolerance grows and your ability to deal with that level of stress and pressure grows and your resilience grows.
One person had a choice between slowing down or upleveling health because they were working more than ever and working harder than ever. They didn't want to slow down because they love what they do. They saw that if they didn't improve their health drastically, taking into account sleep, diet, meditation, working out, exercise, then there was no way they could keep up.
After making all those changes, they found themselves having a much greater capacity than they ever imagined of what their body and mind are capable of doing. Their resilience and their tolerance for the amount of what they do is far greater than it would have been.
When you say it, it's like everybody's like, "Yeah, we've heard that a million times. That's so cliche, like it doesn't really mean anything." And that is self-care. If you're working really hard, it's actually even more important that you take time out to meditate or to prepare a healthful meal instead of grabbing junk food already prepared ultraprocessed. It's even more important that you take enough time to get adequate sleep.
Even though you feel like you're on a treadmill and you can't keep up, by not sleeping, you're slowing down your brain capacity the next day and now you get even further behind in your work and then you feel the need to stay up even later trying to catch up and now you're even more sleep deprived and now your brain is really not firing on all cylinders.
The sound bite recommendation is self-care and everybody's like, "Yeah, we've heard that a million times. That's so worthless. Don't tell us something we haven't heard." And yet so many Americans and people around the world are getting trapped in these vicious cycles where they're not doing it.
It's not even take time to slow down. People should live life with vigor. People should have passion. There are so many problems in the world. We need people to be passionate and step up and be there. Be there for your career. Be there for other people. Be there for your family. Be there for your friends. That means doing stuff. It doesn't mean slowing down and watching Netflix all night. It means doing stuff, but make sure that you're doing enough self-care so that that engine can keep running and so that that passion remains.
It ends up getting really complicated especially in terms of the politics. The roundtable discussion really put the Make America Healthy Again movement on fire and really allowed it to spread. There is a new incoming administration. There are opportunities as well. Especially in healthcare and the National Institutes of Health, there are going to be some disruptive changes coming.
Time will tell whether that ends up being a good thing or a bad thing. The thing that is most hopeful is that a national conversation has begun.
Just the other day, there were Senate hearings largely with Democrats. Staunch liberal Democrats like Cory Booker and Bernie Sanders were having the exact same conversations that were had in the conservative Republican Senate roundtable discussion.
Despite the political animosities, people sometimes ask what side to take. There is no side to take. There is complex perspectives on a lot of different issues. There is no one human being on the planet that anyone would agree on everything with.
What we can all agree on is that there is this chronic disease epidemic that it is primarily metabolic health disorders and mental health disorders. We need to put together that science and once and for all we need to start doing something about it. That includes taking on corporate corruption that is largely playing a role in this.
Manufacturers should not be allowed to introduce brand new chemicals into food that is sold in the United States without rigorous testing. Why on earth does anybody think that's a good idea? We have more than enough chemicals to choose from that are already not tested. So, we got a lot of work to do to try to catch up. But why do we need even more new ones? We don't.
There are not objective tests that people can go out and get for brain effects. You really do have to just subjectively think through how's my mood? How's my anxiety? How's my ability to sleep? How's my use of substances? How are my relationships? How do I interact with others? Am I having panic attacks? Any of those things, especially when they're occurring for no clear reason, should be at least warning signs that you may have impaired metabolism somehow or another impacting your brain.
There are some concrete biomarkers that we can all use and those are usually the biomarkers that for what we call metabolic syndrome and those biomarkers include low HDL cholesterol, high triglycerides, high blood sugar, so pre-diabetes, insulin resistance, whatever it gets called, high blood pressure, and then abdominal obesity or extra abdominal fat.
The shocking news for any listeners who don't know this is that 93% of Americans currently have one or more abnormalities among those biomarkers.
Only 7% of American adults meet the criteria for being metabolically healthy when leaving the brain out of consideration, meaning they have none of five key biomarkers. This indicates a widespread epidemic of metabolic and mental health dysfunction.
For people experiencing mood fluctuations, brain fog, and low energy, foundational lifestyle changes are recommended. These apply to the majority of adults and children, though more serious conditions like schizophrenia and bipolar require additional clinical approaches.
The six pillars include:
- Diet and nutrition
- Movement or exercise
- Sleep
- Minimizing or reducing harmful substances
- Stress reduction practices such as meditation or mindfulness
- Relationships and purpose
Alcohol, marijuana, smoking, and vaping are all considered harmful regardless of marketing claims. The lungs are not designed to inhale chemicals, and long-term studies show that people who vape are more likely to experience health conditions.
For individuals unable to quit smoking tobacco, switching to vaping is considered better than continuing to smoke cigarettes. However, the goal should still be to eventually stop vaping entirely. Nicotine concentrations in vapes are often much higher than in cigarettes, leading to increased addiction.
THC is unequivocally harmful to the human brain. It interacts with receptors throughout the brain and body, increases heart rate, and can impair mitochondrial function. Chronic use leads to cognitive impairment and reduced motivation.
THC increases the risk for psychosis. Epidemiological data shows that individuals who smoke marijuana regularly are approximately four times more likely to develop psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder compared to non-users. Animal models support these findings.
The standard guidance is to move and build muscle. For beginners who are sedentary or overweight, any movement is beneficial—even walking around the living room, doing squats, or jumping jacks. Going outside provides additional benefits including sunlight exposure, nature contact, mindfulness practice, and a break from screens.
There is no one-size-fits-all nutrition strategy because people differ in sensitivities, allergies, preferences, gut microbiota, genetics, and epigenetics. Some tolerate whole grains well while others with celiac disease or gluten sensitivity do not. The same applies to nuts and other foods.
The universal recommendation is to eat real, whole foods that great-grandparents would recognize. These can be processed at home into meals and seasoned with spices. This contrasts with ultra-processed foods purchased in plastic packaging containing numerous unpronounceable ingredients.
While nutrient-dense foods are important, diet can serve purposes beyond simply providing nutrients. Some individuals need to lose weight while others, such as those with anorexia nervosa or cancer patients experiencing severe depression and appetite loss, need to gain weight and address malnutrition.
People with food sensitivities may benefit from elimination diets to identify what they thrive on versus what causes issues.
Fasting or fasting-mimicking diets represent a distinct category of intervention that can function as treatment. The ketogenic diet is the most recognized example. Other approaches include plant-sourced low-calorie fasting-mimicking diets developed by researcher Walter Longo. These interventions work by going without food or tricking the body into a fasting state.
Fasting should not be practiced indefinitely as that leads to starvation. These approaches have powerful healing properties when used for the appropriate duration and circumstances.
Every culture on earth has used fasting as a healing or religious practice for millennia, suggesting observed benefits across human societies.
Bipolar disorder rates have doubled in U.S. adults and increased exponentially in children and adolescents. One study documented a 4,000% increase in pediatric diagnoses, partly due to over-diagnosis of fidgety, moody, or tantrum-prone children who do not meet the true clinical definition.
Three categories of explanation exist: improved recognition and diagnosis; skepticism that rates are truly rising and attribution to labeling or drug-seeking behavior; and genuine increases in prevalence. The speaker places themselves in the third category while acknowledging that the first two factors also occur to some degree.
Standard treatments rely primarily on mood stabilizers and other psychiatric medications. While some individuals respond well, the majority do not achieve remission or recovery. The prevailing clinical message is that bipolar is a lifelong chronic disorder without cure, requiring ongoing management.
Hundreds to thousands of individuals diagnosed with bipolar disorder have reported significant improvement or remission using ketogenic diets or fasting-mimicking diets. The ketogenic diet can be implemented in vegan, vegetarian, omnivore, or carnivore forms and is not limited to bacon consumption.
The ketogenic diet was developed 100 years ago by physicians specifically to treat epilepsy, particularly childhood epilepsy when medications failed. It remains an evidence-based treatment supported by controlled trials and Cochrane reviews.
Many anticonvulsant medications originally developed for epilepsy, such as Depakote and gabapentin, are now commonly prescribed for psychiatric conditions including bipolar disorder. This precedent suggests a diet capable of stopping seizures could have relevance for mental health conditions.
The first published study on ketogenic diets for mental health appeared in 1965, examining women with schizophrenia over two weeks and noting symptom improvement.
Despite assumptions that people with severe mental illness cannot adhere to dietary changes, clinical experience shows that individuals with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and severe depression can successfully implement and maintain ketogenic diets when provided with support, education, and assistance.
Twenty controlled trials of the ketogenic diet for various mental health conditions are underway worldwide, including eight randomized controlled trials. Multiple pilot trials and case reports have been published. A recent review identified over 50 publications involving more than 1,900 participants, with the overwhelming majority showing some benefit.
Not all participants achieve full remission, and mental health involves factors beyond diet alone. Some individuals achieve full remission and are able to taper off psychiatric medications. Recovery often includes a phase of profound grief for the life previously lost due to illness.
A patient who received effective treatment after 30 years of illness expressed profound regret: "I just lost 30 years of my life to that illness." The patient had been in college with a girlfriend, planning marriage, but schizophrenia caused dropping out of college, never having another girlfriend, losing all friends, inability to live independently, significant weight gain, and becoming "a pariah in society for 30 years."
Chris Palmer's dedication stems from personal and family experience. He had his own struggles with mental illness from a young age including OCD, later crippling depression, and suicidality. The primary driver was his mother's experience. She was from a family of eight kids. In her early 40s, after living a normal middle-class life in the Midwest raising a family and helping run her husband's business, a series of extremely stressful family events triggered what began as a "nervous breakdown" that progressed to depression, suicidality, and psychotic symptoms.
Despite receiving all standard treatments—hospitalization, medication, and psychotherapy—nothing worked. She developed a chronic psychotic disorder that ruined her life. She lost custody of all eight children, experienced periods of homelessness with her son, lost her business, lost all money, and lost friends and family. Palmer witnessed her delusions including believing she was Mary Magdalene reincarnated, believing the world was ending, and experiencing paranoia.
Palmer was furious at the mental health field's incompetence and horrified by the treatment approach. Medications made his mother appear like a zombie while she remained psychotic. He questioned whether they were poisoning her on purpose. He entered psychiatry because he saw how devastating mental illness can be—not just for the individual but for entire families—and recognized his mother was innocent with no blame or fault for her condition.
Palmer initially became "one of those evil psychiatrists who just doled out pills that didn't really work." He felt helpless because medication was the only tool available, especially in life-threatening situations involving mania, psychosis, or danger to self or others. He maintained healthy skepticism because the same ineffective approach had failed his mother. Now he has tremendous hope based on new interventions available in 2024, particularly the ketogenic diet, which can be implemented with coaching and support as an achievable, realistic, accessible treatment that can save lives.
Palmer hopes the broader theory will force the field to rethink current practices, look for root causes, and use medications sparingly—primarily in life-threatening situations—then transition to health-promoting treatments. In his 50s, he believes transformation is possible within his lifetime. He predicts that in 10 to 20 years, current 2024 treatments will be viewed as "almost barbaric" with questions about why more effective strategies weren't used.
If parents have family history of mental illness and want to prevent passing it to children, genetics and epigenetics do get passed on. Genetics cannot be changed. Epigenetics—modifications to DNA or microRNA molecules triggered by trauma, especially prolonged trauma—can be transferred through eggs and sperm, impacting children's future mental and metabolic health. However, genes and epigenetics are not the primary determinants. Environment and lifestyle are stronger factors, evidenced by the exponential rise in rates while genes have not changed.
Parents should provide love, safety, independence, allow appropriate risk-taking and failure, support friendships and community, encourage movement and time outside. The biggest blind spot is nutrition—what children consume daily. In America, children are likely eating large amounts of ultraprocessed foods containing chemicals affecting brain function. While abuse and substance abuse are unequivocally worse than diet, for families already providing loving, safe environments, nutrition is the critical overlooked factor.
Powerful food industry interests work to maintain controversy around harmful food chemicals. Companies like Doritos manufacturers hire medical experts to cast doubt on claims of harm. Increasingly, Republicans and Democrats are unifying on this issue.
Specific chemicals are difficult to isolate because randomized controlled trials in humans are ethically prohibited. If a substance is hypothesized to be harmful, ethics boards will not allow exposing half of participants to it, yet the same substances remain in the food supply because they haven't been proven dangerous.
Aspartame (NutraSweet), found in over 500 diet foods and sodas including Diet Coke, was studied in mice exposed to normal doses equivalent to someone drinking several diet sodas daily. Mice exhibited increased anxiety-like behaviors that responded to Valium treatment, confirming standard anxiety rather than a novel condition. Brain imaging showed amygdala hyperactivation. Critically, the increased anxiety risk persisted for two generations of offspring never exposed to aspartame, demonstrating epigenetic transmission.
Large epidemiological studies show people consuming artificial sweeteners have higher rates of anxiety disorders, depression, and various mental health conditions. This represents the strongest human evidence available. A person might develop anxiety from their mother's Diet Coke consumption even without personal consumption, though intergenerational exposure is common.
The practical recommendation is to eat real whole foods. Aspartame is not real food. This addresses both treatment and prevention of mental health conditions.
Best mental health advice received: "Accept yourself for who you are."
Worst mental health advice received: "Let's talk about your relationship with your father as a way of understanding everything that's wrong with you."
Changed belief about mental health: Previously believed chronic severe mental illnesses are a life sentence; now recognizes they are changeable, not impossible, and treatable.
Most important personal mental health change: Changing diet.
One law for everyone: "Be kind to each other."
Palmer emphasizes the gut-brain connection and how daily food choices affect mental state, noting that personal experience often reveals this before science confirms it.
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