Stanford psychiatrist leads 'metabolic psychiatry' push
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- Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in February that changing diet can "cure" schizophrenia, remarks researchers called "unfounded" and that sparked backlash.
- Current scientific consensus holds that schizophrenia cannot be cured through diet, though researchers note treatment options for the condition remain poor.
- Shebani Sethi, a Stanford University researcher, is at the vanguard of a field she calls "metabolic psychiatry," which explores nutrition and metabolic pathways as tools for treating mental illness.
- Sethi's work has caught the attention of Make America Healthy Again movement leaders, including physician Mark Hyman, described as a longtime friend of Kennedy.
- Supporters of the approach argue that mental health is shaped by more than neurotransmitters in the brain, pointing to other bodily pathways that diet could influence.
Why it matters: With mainstream treatments for schizophrenia widely seen as inadequate, the metabolic psychiatry push gives RFK Jr.'s MAHA-aligned critics a credentialed researcher to point to—but the broader scientific community still rejects the claim that diet can cure the condition, keeping the debate polarized between promising fringe research and established consensus.
