Article from www.MadInAmerica.com (Science, Psychiatry, and Social J

Where can this article and others be found?
P

@pkh3381, here's a start:
https://www.madinamerica.com

And here's a longer excerpt from an article found on that website (the subject was teens, but the information applies to all ages):
Lifestyle psychiatry is a branch of lifestyle medicine—which is now a board-certified field, with information and materials available on the American College of Lifestyle Medicine—that is directed toward promoting not only physical, but also mental health. It encompasses six domains or “pillars,” all of which are backed by substantial scientific evidence demonstrating their efficacy: nutrition, detox, exercise, sleep hygiene, emotional connectedness, and stress reduction. “Lifestyle” anything might sound expensive, but it isn’t. Without doing a deep-dive into all of the evidence, the nutshell version of the guidelines in each of these domains is as follows:

For nutrition, it’s the whole food plant-based diet, preferably 100% organic, non-GMO certified, and also hand-washed. There is no substitute for clean, wholesome, real food, because toxicities and deficiencies can both cause and/or contribute to depression.

For detox, it’s not only the elimination of illicit drugs, but also the elimination of legal drugs like cannabis wax, vape pen, cannabis edibles, and even common household toxins, such as room “fresheners,” outgassing chemicals under the sink and in the laundry room, pesticides in the garage, and any toxic soaps, shampoos, and cosmetics that come into direct contact with the body.

For exercise, the recommendation for teens is 300 minutes each week, at least half of which should be moderate to vigorous. This is because exercise is one very powerful way to detox from the flood of toxic exposures in modern life.

For sleep, between eight and eleven hours of restorative sleep are recommended for teenagers. Sleep hygiene can be used to ensure that that goal is met. A reduction in school responsibilities—through a 504 Plan or an IEP at school—is another way to accomplish this goal.

For connectedness, it’s really the depth of relationships more than the number of relationships that counts, but developing at least one or two deeply positive emotional relationships—at home and at school—is critical. Parents are responsible for ensuring that their kids can have friends over to the home. You must take full responsibility for doing that. To kids, connectedness looks like “popularity,” but as adults, we realize that most of what popularity is is ourselves, the parents, engineering it all from behind the scenes.

For stress reduction, developing a daily meditation practice, whether it’s a moving meditation or a sitting one, is a good habit. Making sure that your kids have down-time from electronics, such as a no-phone dinner policy, and a no-phone-at-night policy, is also highly advisable.

Besides lifestyle psychiatry, there are many other alternative approaches to helping teens in psychiatric distress: to name just one, Dr. James Greenblatt’s nutritional model. The World Health Organization (WHO) has also released a document “Guidance on Community Mental Health Services,” that calls for a new paradigm in mental health treatment, from one that is over-reliant on psychotropic drugs and includes coercive elements, to one that is holistic, person-centered, rights-based, and recovery-focused. The WHO document describes in detail several such models for mental health care.