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Nutrition Essentials for Mental Health: A Complete Guide to the Food-Mood Connection


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Author:
Leslie Korn, PhD, MPH, LMHC, ACS, FNTP, BCTMB
Copyright:
2016
Publication Date:
Jan 11, 2016
Publisher:
W.W. Norton
Product Code:
SAM084310
ISBN13:
978-0393709940
Format:
Hardcover
Number of Pages:
464


Description

Exploring the connection between nutrition and mental wellness so therapists can provide more effective, integrated treatment.

Diet is an essential component of a client’s clinical profile. Few therapists, however, have any nutritional training, and many don’t know where to begin. In Nutrition Essentials for Mental Health, Leslie Korn provides clinicians with a practical guide to the complex relationship between what we eat and the way we think, feel, and interact with the world.

Where there is mental illness there is frequently a history of digestive and nutritional problems. Digestive problems in turn exacerbate mental distress, all of which can be improved by nutritional changes. It’s not unusual for a deficit or excess of certain nutrients to disguise itself as a mood disorder. Indeed, nutritional deficiencies factor into most mental illness from anxiety and depression to schizophrenia and PTSD and dietary changes can work alongside or even replace medications to alleviate symptoms and support mental wellness.

Nutrition Essentials for Mental Health offers the mental health clinician the principles and practices necessary to provide clients with nutritional counseling to improve mood and mental health. Integrating clinical evidence with the author’s extensive clinical experience, it takes clinicians step-by-step through the essentials for integrating nutritional therapies into mental health treatment. Throughout, brief clinical vignettes illustrate commonly encountered obstacles and how to overcome them.

Readers will learn:
  • Why nutrition matters in mental health
  • The role of various nutrients in nourishing both the brain and the gut, the “second brain”
  • Typical nutritional culprits that underlie or exacerbate specific mental disorders
  • Assessment techniques for evaluating a client’s unique nutritional needs, and counseling methods for the challenging but rewarding process of nutritional change.
  • Leading-edge protocols for the use of various macro- and micronutrients, vitamins, and supplements to improve mental health
  • Considerations for food allergies, sensitivities, and other special diets The effects of foods and nutrients on DSM-5 categories of illness, and alternatives to pharmaceuticals for treatment
  • Comprehensive, stage-based approaches to coaching clients about dietary plans, nutritional supplements, and other resources
  • Ideas for practical, affordable, and individualized diets, along with optimal cooking methods and recipes
  • Nutritional strategies to help with withdrawal from drugs, alcohol and pharmaceuticals

And much more. With this resource in hand, clinicians can enhance the efficacy of all their methods and be prepared to support clients’ mental health with more effective, integrated treatment.

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Leslie Korn, PhD, MPH, LMHC, ACS, FNTP, BCTMB's Profile

Leslie Korn, PhD, MPH, LMHC, ACS, FNTP, BCTMB Related seminars and products


Leslie Korn, PhD, MPH, LMHC, ACS, FNTP, BCTMB, is a renowned integrative medicine clinician and educator specializing in the use of nutritional, herbal and culinary medicine for the treatment of trauma and emotional and chronic physical illness. She is known for her dynamism and humor providing clients effective alternatives to psychotropics. She completed her graduate education in the department of psychiatry and public health at Harvard Medical School and her life training in the jungle of Mexico where she lived and worked alongside local healers for over 25 years. She directed a naturopathic medicine and training clinic facilitating health, culinary and fitness retreats. She is licensed and certified in nutritional therapy, mental health counseling, and bodywork (Polarity and Cranial Sacral and medical massage therapies) and is an approved clinical supervisor. She introduced somatic therapies for complex trauma patients in outpatient psychiatry at Harvard Medical school in 1985 and served Acupuncture and faculty at National College of Naturopathic Medicine.

She is the author of the seminal book on the body and complex trauma: Rhythms of Recovery: Integrative Medicine for PTSD and Complex Trauma, 2nd Edition (Routledge, 2012, 2023); The Brainbow Blueprint: A Clinical Guide to Integrative Medicine and Nutrition for Mental Well Being (PESI, 2023), Nutrition Essentials for Mental Health (W.W. Norton, 2016), Eat Right Feel Right: Over 80 Recipes and Tips to Improve Mood, Sleep, Attention & Focus (PESI, 2017); Multicultural Counseling Workbook: Exercises, Worksheets & Games to Build Rapport with Diverse Clients (PESI, 2015); The Good Mood Kitchen (W.W. Norton, 2017); and Natural Woman: Herbal Remedies for Radiant Health at Every Age and Stage of Life (Shambhala, 2019). She was a founder of the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork, a Fullbright scholar in Herbal Medicine and an NIH-funded scientist, in mind/body medicine. She is an approved clinical supervisor and is the research director at the Center for World Indigenous Studies where she designs culinary and herbal medicine programs with tribal communities engaged in developing integrative medicine programs.

 

Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Dr. Leslie Korn maintains a private practice and is the Director of Research at the Center for World Indigenous Studies. She receives a speaking honorarium and recording royalties from PESI, Inc. and additionally receives publishing royalties from Norton, Shambhala, and Routledge. She has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: Dr. Leslie Korn is a member of the Nutritional Therapy Association and Integrative Medicine for the Underserved.


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