Can Better Diet Prevent Antisocial Behavior?

Clinical & Research News

Can Better Diet Prevent Antisocial Behavior?

Joan Arehart-Treichel

When children from an impoverished background receive adequate nutrition, increased exercise, and an educational boost, it may keep them from engaging in antisocial behavior later.

A few months ago, C. Bernard Gesch of Oxford University and coworkers reported in the British Journal of Psychiatry that vitamin-mineral-essential fatty acid supplements appeared capableof dampening violence in a prison population (Psychiatric News, October 2, 2002). However, J.S. Zil, M.D., J.D., chief forensic psychiatrist of the State of California Department of Corrections, told Psychiatric News that he was skeptical of their results. To which Gesch replied: "I don’t feel that Dr. Zil’scynicism is a problem. It’s only natural to be cautiousabout such provocative findings."

And now here comes another study with similar thought-provoking results. It suggests that taking nutritional supplements during childhood might reduce antisocial behavior later.

Adrian Raine, Ph.D.: "It couldalso be that it’s physical exercise, not better nutrition,that is the active ingredient."

The study was headed by AdrianRaine, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the University ofSouthern California and a scientist noted for exploring thebrain biology of criminals (Psychiatric News, March 3, 2000).Raine reported the investigation at the 9th International Congresson Schizophrenia Research, held recently in Colorado Springs,Colo., in a session on the neurobiology and management of violencein schizophrenia. The study is also in press with the AmericanJournal of Psychiatry.

This study, Raine explained, took place on a tropical islandwhere the standard of living was quite low. It included 1763-year-old children. Half the children served as a control groupand received, from ages 3 through 5, their usual diets, usualexercise, and usual education. The other half served as an experimentalgroup and received good nutrition, increased exercise, and aneducational boost. The educational boost consisted of effortsto improve verbal skills, visuospatial skills, visuomotor coordination,creativity, conceptual skills, memory skills, and sensationand perception.

Raine and his colleagues then tested the subjects for conduct disorder when they reached 17 years of age and found that therewas significantly less conduct disorder in the experimentalgroup. They also found that this effect was especially prevalentin the experimental subjects who had been malnourished at thestart of the study.

Raine and his coworkers again assessed subjects for criminal behavior at age 23. Self-reported crime was significantly reduced,by about 34 percent, compared with the control group. Therewas a trend for official crime to be statistically reduced toabout a third of the levels of the control subjects.

Thus, environmental enrichment appeared to reduce the incidenceof conduct disorder, and perhaps also of criminal behavior,in these disadvantaged children, Raine and his colleagues concluded.

E. Fuller Torrey, M.D.: "Something is going on in these children."

Peter Buckley, M.D., chairof psychiatry at the Medical College of Georgia and chair ofthe congress session, described the results as "provocative."E. Fuller Torrey, M.D., of the Stanley Medical Research Institutein Bethesda, Md., the discussant for the session, said, "Somethingis going on in those children."

The question is, of course, what?

Raine told Psychiatric News that the educational boost giventhe subjects may have made a difference. He also said, however, that he suspects that education is not the explanation since"past attempts [at using education to prevent antisocial behavior]have not been very successful in producing long-term change."

He said that exercise may have made a difference, since Salk Institute scientists recently found that rodents that exercisedearly in life had enhanced growth of neurons in the brain’shippocampus.

And how about nutrition? This is the explanation that Raine favors, particularly fatty acid supplementation. The experimental group ate lots of fish, he noted. Fish are rich in omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, and these acids influence the levels of serotonin and dopamine and are deficient in violent offenders.