Not infrequently, some very important medical studies don’t get the attention they deserve. A long term study about fish oil prevention of mental illness, in this case psychosis, came out in August. The results of that investigation should have been shouted from the roof tops. Its time again to raise my voice.
Imagine a short term treatment, lasting only 3 months, that significantly reduced the likelihood of perhaps the most severe form of mental illness and continued to do so for the next SEVEN YEARS! If you imagined a bottle of fish oil, you nailed it.
The original article was published 5 years ago. Psychiatrists at a hospital in Austria gave a fish oil supplement to a group of young adults with “ultra high risk” of developing psychosis. That risk level was determined by applying criteria that are strongly linked with psychosis (on average 40% with those characteristics develop psychosis within 12 months). The subjects were given the fish oil supplement for just 3 months. After one year, only two of the forty one subjects in the fish oil group developed psychosis. In contrast, eleven of the of forty in the placebo group became psychotic.
The new investigation continued to follow those individuals over seven years. There was no further fish oil supplementation or other intervention.
What did they learn? Quite impressively, they found that only four of forty one in the fish oil group had developed psychosis vs sixteen of forty in the control group.
The investigators found more positive impacts. For example the fish oil group had improved social functioning compared to the others.
When I think about this, the “C” word cross my mind, Cure. If you do something for 3 months and stop, but you never develop the problem, in a way that means something was cured; something was fixed. That would be amazing. The evidence so far tells us that that is exactly what happened to these young people. There have been many other important discoveries about fish oil as well as some controversies and concerns. However, these results of this safe treatment are so very impassive, with such wide spread impacts, that everyone ought to know about fish oil prevention of mental illness.