It is our pleasure to invite you to the second major international meeting of the International Society for Nutritional Psychiatry Research, to be held in London, United Kingdom, between the 20th to 22nd of October 2019 at the The Park Plaza London Riverbank on the banks of the Thames River, within 1.4 miles of Trafalgar Square and Buckingham Palace, and a 15-minute stroll from the London Eye.
The ISNPR conference will comprise:
- Plenary presentations from leading international researchers
- State of the art symposia and free oral presentations from researchers and clinicians
- Multidisciplinary workshops for psychiatrists, psychologists, dietitians and other health professionals
- An exciting social program
This meeting will build upon the initial 2017 conference and will reflect the broad and evolving spectrum of Nutritional Psychiatry research, from the sub-cellular to translation and implementation science. The program will emphasise the international growth of the field, and cater to the interests of researchers and clinicians from the fields of psychiatry and psychology, as well as public health, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, dietetics and integrative medicine. There will be a strong focus on basic science and the biological processes and factors that underpin the links between diet, nutrition and mental health, including the gut-brain axis, immunological and metabolic processes and molecular science. This meeting will also focus on translation and public health applications of Nutritional Psychiatry, with a focus to build capacity across clinical, research, and public domains.
An important aspect of the ISNPR conference will be the workshops, which will offer training from skilled and highly experienced psychiatrists and dietitians. These workshops will focus on the practical aspects of nutrition and clinical care for those with mental disorders.
We look forward to welcoming you to London for what promises to be a highly stimulating program that also offers important opportunities for networking, professional training and collaboration.
Felice Jacka, PhD
President, International Society for Nutritional Psychiatry Research
Find out more about the public Conference Opening Session
ISNPR Statement of Purpose:
“To support scientifically rigorous research into nutritional approaches to the prevention and treatment of mental disorders and their comorbidities”
Poor diet, via its impact on chronic disease, now comprises the top risk factor for early death across middle and high-income countries. At the same time, mental and substance use disorders account for the leading cause of global disability, with unipolar depression contributing the largest share of that burden.
However, it is only in recent years that we have seen the development of a highly consistent, rigorous and compelling evidence base for diet and nutrition as important modifiable risk factors and treatment options for mental disorders. The rapidly developing evidence base from this new field of Nutritional Psychiatry now suggests that mental and physical illnesses and diet form a triad, with nutrition and dietary behaviours as a shared predictor. This opens the door to common and integrated preventive and treatment approaches based on these shared pathways.
In 2013 the International Society for Nutritional Psychiatry Research (ISNPR) was founded and now comprises more than 400 researchers and clinicians from leading international academic institutions and organisations across the globe. The ISNPR represents an international research movement focused on developing effective, sustainable, population-level prevention initiatives for mental illnesses that build on the established and developing approaches to the noncommunicable somatic disorders. Moreover, new clinical interventions targeting both dietary behaviours and the pathways that mediate the diet-mental health connection, including the human microbiome and the immune system, are yielding important new data that support diet-focused approaches to treatment.
This is an exciting and transformational new research field, but it is in its nascency. There is much to be done to extend the new research breakthroughs in Nutritional Psychiatry into psychotic and other low prevalence mental disorders and to understand the pathways that mediate the established relationships in order to better target our interventions. Thus, the imperative to grow this field and build cross-disciplinary collaborations is clear. We welcome you to join us in this important endeavor.