Early nourishment for good mental health
When it comes to adults’ mental health, their early education and nutrition may have more impact than experts previously thought.
Preschool programs that provide exercise, enriched instruction and hot meals with fish or meat may stave off mental illness and crime patterns that might otherwise occur in early adulthood, a study led by a University of Southern California psychology professor concludes.
“We believe the seeds of crime are sown early in life,” said Adrian Raine, who with four other researchers describes the results in this month’s American Journal of Psychiatry. “To prevent crime, we have to start much earlier in life.”
The study took place over three decades and tracked the behavior of students in Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean. It is one of the few studies designed to determine whether early childhood intervention can pay off in mental health benefits in early adulthood, when conditions such as schizophrenia and its precursor (known as schizotypal or antisocial behavior) tend to occur.
Raine cautioned, however, that there does appear to be a strong genetic component to schizophrenia that shouldn’t be discounted. “Pushing biology and genetic issues under the carpet isn’t going to help society in the long run,” he said. The good nutrition and educational programs early in life might at least delay the onset of mental illness in some people, he added.
The study began in 1972 with funding from the World Health Organization, which was trying to improve conditions for children in developing countries. Peter Venables, a professor of psychology at the University of York in England (who was Raine’s doctoral thesis supervisor) and Sarnoff A. Mednick, director of the Social Science Research Institute at USC, decided to combine it with research assessing the early roots of schizophrenia and whether it might be preventable, Mednick said.
Raine came aboard in 1987 and received funding in 1990 from the National Institute of Mental Health and the Ministry of Health in Mauritius to continue the project.
The island nation was chosen as the locale for the study because the WHO wanted it to take place in a developing country, where it was easy to track the lives and progress of the students. Few Mauritians ever leave the country.
Other childhood intervention programs, such as Head Start in the United States, have shown academic benefits, although Raine said they “tend to wash out” a few years later. “What’s interesting, is [this study shows] that there are behavioral differences that are sustained in the long term,” Raine said.
During the two-year program, a group of 83 3-year-olds was fed hot lunches of fish, chicken or mutton and salad; milk was provided during breaks and fruit juice was served in the morning. Their school day lasted six to seven hours, and included more than two hours of exercise. They were lavished with an intensive educational program, with one teacher for every five students. The wide-ranging curriculum included game-playing, memory and counting exercises, painting and object-naming drills. In one exercise, for example, teachers used puppets to demonstrate concepts such as sadness. Field trips supplemented the classroom work.
Their psychological health was measured against a control group of 355 children who were enrolled in a basic preschool curriculum that lasted five hours a day and relied on one teacher per 30 students. It didn’t include the extra exercise and instruction. And the students brought their own lunches -- usually bread or rice -- from home.
The group that received intervention had a 27% reduction in problems with antisocial behavior at age 17 compared with the control group, and committed 35% fewer crimes by age 23. Those in the intervention group who were the most malnourished at age 3 appeared to benefit the most.
It isn’t clear which component of the enrichment program had the biggest effect: the improved nutrition, the educational stimulation, the physical exercise or the extra attention -- or a combination of them all.
Raine speculates that one contributing factor might be the omega-3 oils in the fish, which one study has shown reduce antisocial behavior among prisoners. He also said the additional teaching likely would have aroused the enriched students’ brains more -- brain scans showed better functionality.
Raine cautioned that it isn’t clear if the results would apply to more developed nations such as the U.S. due to cultural, social and economic differences, although he believes they will, particularly in poorer areas of the U.S., he said.
E. Fuller Torrey, associate director for laboratory research at Stanley Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, Md., which funds research on schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, said he was skeptical that nutritional improvements would make much difference in preventing schizophrenia, although they might reduce antisocial behavior.
If the studies can be replicated in the U.S., Torrey said, “it could have clear implications for programs for small children, or at least it should.”
