Vegetarians more likely to have mental issues vs omnivores but it's not the diet!

[astro]

Re these interesting studies from a few years ago. So a vegetarian diet is safe but being in a vegetarian demographic not so much.

The present study investigated associations between vegetarian diet and mental disorders.

Methods

Participants were drawn from the representative sample of the German Health Interview and Examination Survey and its Mental Health Supplement (GHS-MHS). Completely vegetarian (N = 54) and predominantly vegetarian (N = 190) participants were compared with non-vegetarian participants (N = 3872) and with a non-vegetarian socio-demographically matched subsample (N = 242).

Results
Vegetarians displayed elevated prevalence rates for depressive disorders, anxiety disorders and somatoform disorders. Due to the matching procedure, the findings cannot be explained by socio-demographic characteristics of vegetarians (e.g. higher rates of females, predominant residency in urban areas, high proportion of singles). The analysis of the respective ages at adoption of a vegetarian diet and onset of a mental disorder showed that the adoption of the vegetarian diet tends to follow the onset of mental disorders.

Conclusions

In Western cultures vegetarian diet is associated with an elevated risk of mental disorders. However, there was no evidence for a causal role of vegetarian diet in the etiology of mental disorders.

Besides differences in nutrition status, vegetarians and non-vegetarians differ in a number of psychological and socio-demographic characteristics that may influence their risk for mental disorders. Vegetarians are predominantly female [17], are more likely to live in urban areas and to be single [18]. All these socio-demographic factors are correlates of the presence of mental disorders [19]. Moreover, vegetarians tend to be more aware of the factors influencing their dietary intake and of the importance of a healthy lifestyle in general. A number of studies have shown that vegetarians tend to be slimmer, drink less alcohol, and exercise more than non-vegetarians [20-23]. In addition, vegetarians tend to define themselves negatively by emphasizing what they do not do; they tend to stress their dissimilarity from others and thereby accentuate their differences from the general society [24]. Moreover, some vegetarians base the choice of their diet more on an ethical motivation [25]. Thus, some psychological and socio-demographic characteristics of vegetarians, such as negative self-definition and dysfunctional eating attitudes, could have detrimental effects on mental health; other characteristics could have beneficial effects, such as a healthy lifestyle and ethical motivation

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[Hilarity_N.Suze]

…and they are more likely to stay single and have fewer friends, because nobody except other vegetarians wants to have them over for dinner.