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Behavioral interventions of dietary changes to reduce depressive symptoms: a meta-analysis

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Abstract

Aim

Many meta-studies have found that dietary interventions, particularly focusing on an anti-inflammatory diet, are effective for depressive symptom reduction. However, those interventions use a pre-planned controlled diet, thus limiting the real-life application of the findings. Some interventions combine behavioral support with a dietary intervention to help participants change their own diet without external restrictions. This meta-study examined the effect of those behavioral interventions on depressive symptoms.

Methods

A systematic literature search was performed by searching relevant studies in databases, including PsycINFO, Medline, and PubMed, published by March 2021. Random effect models were used to combine the effect sizes. Subgroup analyses by type of intervention were also performed.

Results

Seven studies, with a total of 773 participants at baseline, were eligible for the review. The effect size of depressive symptom score changes for intervention groups was significant with a medium effect size (r = .43, p <.01), and the effect size for the control groups was not significant. For the sub-group analyses, motivational interviewing interventions had a large effect size.

Conclusion

These results confirm that behavioral interventions for dietary change are effective in improving depressive symptoms, especially with a motivational interviewing approach. Thus, integrating a dietary intervention into traditional depression treatment may help treat people with depression.

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Data availability

Data are available from manuscripts used for the analysis.

Code availability

CMA 3.0. used without custom code.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatric Rehabilitation and Counseling Professions, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, Research Tower Room #801P, 675 Hoes Lane W., Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA

    SunHee Eissenstat & Emmaleigh Hauck

  2. Department of Psychiatric Rehabilitation and Counseling Professions, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, Camden, NJ, USA

    Ni Gao

  3. Graduate School of Counseling Psychology, Catholic University of Korea, Seoul, South Korea

    Boyoung Kim

  4. Department of Clinical and Preventive Nutrition Sciences, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, Piscataway, NJ, USA

    Rebecca Brody

Authors
  1. SunHee Eissenstat
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  2. Ni Gao
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  3. Boyoung Kim
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  4. Rebecca Brody
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  5. Emmaleigh Hauck
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Contributions

Drs. SunHee Eissenstat and Ni Gao are principal investigators of the study, and they contributed from building the research question to interpreting the findings. Dr. Boyoung Kim analyzed the data. Dr. Rebecca Brody assisted interpretation of the findings as a nutrition expert. Ms. Emmaleigh Hauck assisted article search and review with Dr. Eissenstat’s supervision.

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Correspondence to SunHee Eissenstat.

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This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors. The study adhered to all applied ethical guidelines of the researcher’s institution.

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Eissenstat, S., Gao, N., Kim, B. et al. Behavioral interventions of dietary changes to reduce depressive symptoms: a meta-analysis. J Public Health (Berl.) (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10389-023-02157-z

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