The groundbreaking science of metabolic psychiatry is redefining mental health care by exploring the vital link between energy metabolism and brain function.
Metabolic Mind is a nonprofit working to amplify the field’s scientific advances, clinical wisdom, and personal stories to foster knowledge, community, and inspiration in the fight against mental illness.
Metabolic Psychiatry: A Paradigm Shift in Treating Mental Illness
"If we hadn't come to understand that our son's 'mental illness' was caused by disordered brain metabolism, he'd still be suffering."
Jan Ellison Baszucki, Founder
We are a nonprofit leveraging the science and practice of metabolic psychiatry to transform mental health outcomes.
Our founding family’s experience of recovery using metabolic therapies drives our commitment to transforming the health of those living with or at risk of psychiatric illness. We provide resources for individuals, families, educators, and clinicians seeking to leverage ketogenic therapy and other innovative approaches to optimizing metabolic health and overall well-being.
Decades of scientific evidence suggest that mental illness is rooted in systemic metabolic dysfunction affecting the brain. Ketogenic therapy and other metabolic strategies are emerging as promising new treatments for psychiatric disorders.
Our founders personally understand the challenges of a mental health crisis as well as the life-restoring impact of successful interventions. They are dedicated to advancing the study of neurometabolism and ketogenic therapies to give hope to families like theirs.
Photo Credit: John Howland, M.D., professor of pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Since the 1920s, a therapeutic ketogenic diet has been used to successfully treat epilepsy in children and adults.
This offers a big clue as to how metabolism impacts brain function–and how to fix it when it’s impaired.
Today people are using ketogenic and other metabolic therapies to find relief from dozens of brain disorders, from Alzheimer’s to depression to schizophrenia.
More than a dozen current clinical trials are extending the evidence for therapeutic ketosis from the field of neurology to the field of psychiatry.
Neuroscience shows us that brain metabolism is impaired in people with mental disorders, and that improving it reduces symptoms.
Ketogenic diets aren’t just for weight loss. For many people, they can be a cornerstone of both metabolic and mental health.
A new field is rapidly emerging to assess and treat neurometabolic dysfunction to improve mental health.
Conventional psychiatric treatment typically relies almost entirely on medications to keep symptoms under control. Talk therapy is often prescribed as an adjunctive treatment, but the root causes of mental illness, as well as the lifestyle changes that can lead to healing, are often left out of treatment paradigms.
Metabolic psychiatry seeks to flip treatment for mental illness on its head, putting therapeutic nutrition, circadian rhythm management, and movement as the foundation of recovery and wellness.
