Depressed? Try some Omega-3 fatty acids

Last year when I was on my child psychiatry rotation, I had to present a paper on treatment. In my research I learned that Omega 3 fatty acids have been shown to lower rates of violent behavior in an English prison, as reported in this long Guardian article under the heading "Prison trial".

This has led some people to indict the lack of Omega 3 fatty acids in the modern diet as the reason for a general increase in violence. I don't know if I buy it, but here's one explanation of the theory. (The Sydney Morning Herald piece also supplied the graphic you see below.)

Using a new health information search engine today, I search "Omega 3 fatty acids" to see the latest medical study articles on it, and this is what I found in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. It concludes:

"Meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials demonstrate a statistically significant benefit in unipolar and bipolar depression (p = .02). The results were highly heterogeneous, indicating that it is important to examine the characteristics of each individual study to note the differences in design and execution. There is less evidence of benefit in schizophrenia."

This is neat, since it means that Omega 3 fatty acids could be a powerful multi-purpose drug as it has been shown to have cardioprotective effects as well (here's a post on that from some time ago).