World Mental Health Day 2026
On October 10th, World Mental Health Day, we take a moment to reflect on the importance of protecting mental wellbeing, advancing research and strengthening prevention efforts within the field.
Although growing evidence links diet, nutrients, and the gut microbiome with mental wellbeing, existing research is fragmented, largely observational and limited in scope. This is exactly the gap that NUTRIMIND aims to help address. The EU-funded project brings together expertise from across Europe to investigate these relationships more systematically and across different stages of life.
To mark the occasion of the day, we asked partners across the NUTRIMIND consortium to share a glimpse into their future work and how their contribution will help build the evidence needed to better understand and support mental health.
The main goal of NUTRIMIND will be to understand how nutrition fits within the broader range of factors that shape mental health. Marie-Anne Vanderhasselt from Ghent University explains:
“Within NUTRIMIND, I will contribute to understanding how modifiable factors such as nutrition may influence mental health across different stages of life. By strengthening the evidence on the links between diet, stress, anxiety and depression, our work aims to support better prevention and more comprehensive approaches to mental wellbeing.”
Building this understanding requires a stronger evidence base by bringing dietary information from different studies into a common framework. Maria Traka from QIB about her role in the project:
“I will be responsible for ensuring that all existing and newly collected dietary data in NUTRIMIND are harmonised. Bringing these data together across studies will help us build a more robust and consistent evidence base and give us greater confidence in the relationships between dietary factors and mental health.”
Understanding how the relationship between nutrition and mental health develops over time will be another important aspect of the project. The work led by Luis Moreno from CIBER will focus on this exact relation:
“Within NUTRIMIND, I will contribute data from two longitudinal cohort studies following children from early life into later childhood and adulthood. These cohorts will provide valuable evidence to better understand how early-life diet and gut microbiota may influence mental health over time, helping to clarify potential pathways and identify factors that may contribute to mental health across the life course.”
Once sufficient data is available, their analysis can reveal meaningful patterns and relationships. Falk Hildebrand from QIB quotes:
“My role in NUTRIMIND will be to coordinate the data analysis side of the project — collating data, analysing this and ensuring that we get a robust signal linking diet to mental health through the microbiome.”
Beyond generating and analysing evidence, NUTRIMIND will pioneer participatory approaches where citizens contribute to data collection, interpretation, and intervention design. Dilek Fraisl on behalf of the IIASA team reports:
“IIASA will bring its expertise and experience in Citizen Science design and implementation to NUTRIMIND, supporting a better understanding of the links between nutrition and mental health. IIASA will also contribute its expertise in co-designing and facilitating Communities of Practice (CoPs) through a multi-actor approach involving citizen scientists, policymakers and healthcare professionals and others.”
The questions around nutrition and mental health are complex, but that is precisely why collaborative research matters. NUTRIMIND aspires to add another piece to the picture, bringing us closer to clearer evidence, integrated approaches, and, ultimately, new opportunities to support mental wellbeing through informed public health policy and clinical practice.