Annual Research Review: Micronutrients and their role in the treatment of paediatric mental illness.

Abstract

The aim of this narrative review is to summarize evidence relating the importance of nutrient intake from diet and supplementation for paediatric mental health. We begin by reviewing several mechanisms by which nutrients maximize brain health, including enabling metabolic reactions to occur, supporting mitochondrial function, reducing inflammation and assisting with detoxification. Circumstances that may contribute to an individual requiring additional nutrients beyond what are available in the diet, such as consumption of nutritionally depleted food, individual differences in biological need, long-term medication use and gut-brain health needs are then reviewed. These factors underpin the importance of tackling deficiencies relative to individual metabolic requirements with a broad spectrum of micronutrients, as opposed to a single nutrient approach, to address personal metabolic needs and/or environmentally induced nutrient depletions. The evidence for treating psychological symptoms with supplementary micronutrients is presented, summarizing research using broad-spectrum micronutrients in the treatment of mental health issues including aggression, autism spectrum disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and emotional dysregulation, often with medium between-group effect sizes compared with placebo, with clinically meaningful changes. The breadth and consistency of the findings highlight the importance of receiving a complete foundation of nutrients to optimize brain health; however, the small number of studies identifies the importance of future work to replicate these preliminary findings. Documented safety in 8-week randomized controlled trials with open-label extensions up to 16 weeks and longer-term follow-up for 1.5-5 years in smaller samples provide reassurance that this treatment approach does not result in serious adverse events. We provide recommendations for future research including consistency in micronutrient interventions, scalable delivery models, effectiveness and implementation studies and the need to investigate these interventions in the prevention and management of less-studied childhood psychiatric conditions.