NeuroPsych Nutrition

So heartbreaking 💔 We need integrated whole person care! Mental health = brain health. 🧠

Mia died on a children’s psychiatric ward in Sheffield in January 2024. She had been sectioned after what doctors described as an ‘acute psychotic episode’. Instead of asking what else might be happening in her brain and immune system that caused sudden onset of total behavioural and emotional change, plus many concerning physical symptoms, clinicians decided there was ‘no underlying physical cause’ and passed her on to mental health services.

We now know – because someone finally did the right tests after she died – that Mia had autoimmune encephalitis: a form of brain inflammation in which the immune system attacks the brain, causing dramatic neuropsychiatric symptoms including agitation, seizures and changes in personality and behaviour that are usually totally out of character. The coroner heard that if a lumbar puncture and further neurological investigations had been done before she was transferred to the Becton Centre, there was a chance her condition could have been identified and treated. The jury concluded that the failure to do that ‘possibly contributed’ to her death.

Mia’s mother, Chloe, says she believes her daughter was simply dismissed and pushed into mental health services as quickly as possible. I believe her. Totally. I think she is right.

And I know Mia is not an isolated case, because we have already watched this happen to other young women – including Lucy Dawson, who I had the privilege of talking to and writing about for my book in 2022, ‘Sexy But Psycho’.

Full article is now in my stories and on my blog.