Psychology

The human gut is home to trillions of microorganisms, and research is finding that this microbiome has important impacts on our health and wellbeing. However, what do you do when you feel that your gut microbiome needs a boost? It is possible to change your microbiome, for both better and worse? University of Canterbury MSc Psychology student Jessica Heaton outlines interesting ways to improve our gut microbiome's bacterial diversity, and how this can impact our physical and mental health.

For the past several years, through the NUTRIMUM study, Te Puna Toiora | UC’s Mental Health and Nutrition Research group has been investigating the effect that micronutrient supplementation, and maternal depression and anxiety can have on infant development. One of the aspects of interest in this research has been the collection of microbiome samples from mothers and infants, in...

Publication just out: Blampied, M., Tylianakis, J. M., Bell, C., Gilbert, C., & Rucklidge, J. J. (2023). Efficacy and safety of a vitamin-mineral intervention for symptoms of anxiety and depression in adults: A randomised placebo-controlled trial “NoMAD”. Journal of Affective Disorders, 339, 954-964. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2023.05.077

Pregnancy is a time where many physiological and psychosocial changes occur. It can bring feelings of excitement but also apprehensiveness and stress and is a period of increased vulnerability for the onset or relapse of mental illness. The most common mental health problems during pregnancy are anxiety and depression which are amongst the leading causes of maternal morbidity and...

Do people who suffer from specific psychiatric symptoms, like those associated with ADHD, have a different bacterial microbiome than those who don't have these symptoms? Are our bugs making us impulsive? Therefore, what if we changed out these bugs? What's the role nutrition plays? Professsor Julia Rucklidge explores some exciting connections.

Dr Siobhan Campbell Siobhan is a recent PhD graduate from Te Puna Toiora (Mental Health and Nutrition Research Lab) based at the University of Canterbury. She is particularly interested in the impact of nutritional intervention on maternal mental health and infant development. Alongside her studies in nutritional psychology, Siobhan is completing additional studies in clinical psychology, working as an intern...

By Jessica Heaton, MSc, postgraduate student in clinical psychology. Pregnancy can be an exciting journey for many, but for others, it comes with unexpected challenges, such as maternal depression. Depression during pregnancy, or antenatal depression, affects approximately 20% of pregnant individuals. It doesn’t just make pregnancy harder—it can have long-term effects on infants and the wider whānau. Research consistently...

When we are under high stress, we can often reach for foods that are “comforting” (like biscuits, donuts, cake, pastries, and chocolate bars), but these foods may not be the best choice for feeding your brain under stressful and demanding circumstances. Comfort foods are calorie-rich but nutrient-poor. Further, under high stress (and it doesn’t actually matter what has caused the high stress, whether it...

Over the past four years, New Zealand’s suicide statistics have continued to increase. In 2018, New Zealand's suicide rate was at its highest at 13.67 per 100,000. Males made up 75% of this number. That's almost double the amount of people that died on our roads last year. These statistics just “touch the surface” of New Zealand’s serious social and health crisis.  That doesn’t...

Last week, Mariska Bot and colleagues published a clinical trial in JAMA whereby they randomized overweight or obese adults with subsyndromal depressive symptoms to placebo, micronutrients (400 mcg folic acid, 800IU vitamin D, 30 mcg selenium, 100 mg calcium, and 1412 mg DHA+EPA), micronutrients plus behavioural activation or placebo plus behavioural activation. Their primary outcome was cumulative onset of...