Important New Research Announced
A major new research project begins in January 2008 to investigate the relationship between nutrition and anti-social behaviour. Developed by Natural Justice, the project is titled: Nutrition as a modifiable cause of antisocial behaviour: replication of a double blind randomised controlled trial. The research follows on from earlier work which demonstrated that supplementing prisoners’ diets with vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids led to a remarkable drop in anti-social and violent behaviour in the prison. This project sets out to confirm the findings of the previous study and deepen understanding of the effects of nutrients on specific problems such as violence and drug-related offences, as well as on incidents of self-harm. It will also investigate possible underlying mechanisms by which nutrients might affect behaviour. The project uses nutritional supplements as a research tool, to bring prisoners’ diets up to recommended standards and compare them with a control group given placebos.
The Wellcome Trust (http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/), the world’s largest medical research charity, has provided a grant of almost £1.5 million to carry out the study. The study has been developed by Bernard Gesch, Natural Justice’s Director, and now Senior Research Scientist at the University Laboratory of Physiology at Oxford. He will coordinate the study, which is lead by Professor John Stein and a team of world renowned scientists from Imperial College London, Liverpool University, the University of Surrey, the Institute of Psychiatry in London, the Medical Research Council (MRC)’s Human Nutrition Research unit and University College Cork in Ireland. Facilitated by the Ministry of Justice and the Scottish Prison Service, the research will involve over 1000 young men in prison (aged 16-21) over three years.
If this replication study does indeed confirm a causal link between diet and anti-social behaviour, as strongly indicated in the original work, it will have profound social implications. Natural Justice’s research so far suggests that improving nutrition could be a highly efficacious and cost-effective approach to reducing anti-social behaviour, whether in institutions or in the community. Importantly, good nutrition can also provide a constructive platform for conventional interventions to work more efficiently.
Natural Justice is extremely grateful to all the collaborators on this exciting research project and in particular acknowledges with deep appreciation the vision and generosity of the Wellcome Trust. Natural Justice would also like to thank its core contributors, without whom the research design and launch could not have been accomplished.