Abstract
Food, diet, vitamins, trace elements, minerals, and additives have been part of folk treatments for mental disorders dating back to itinerant peddlers of snake oil. Foods are often touted by those outside the traditional medical mainstream as substitutes for established treatments. Parents often besiege the practitioner with unproved remedies because they may sound more benign and “natural” than drugs or behavior modification. Unproved dietary remedies are frequently promoted by alternative practitioners seeking a competitive advantage in the marketplace of mental health services. These practitioners often target psychopharmacology as “unnatural” and dangerous compared to the beneficent natural use of foods and diet, thus playing upon parental anxieties and allegiances to holistic medicine.
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Conners, C.K., Sparrow, E.P. (1999). Nootropics And Foods. In: Werry, J.S., Aman, M.G. (eds) Practitioner’s Guide to Psychoactive Drugs for Children and Adolescents. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0086-9_14
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