Integrating Nutrition Into Mental Health Care

Mental health counselors, psychologists, social workers, and psychiatrists realize that nutrition may be a factor in their clients’ mental health, but a lack of nutritional science background and resources makes it difficult for them to incorporate nutrition into the care they provide. Likewise, registered dietitian nutritionists, new to the field of mental health care (whether in a facility or in private practice), may feel the need for succinct resources geared to this area of nutritional care. Integrating Nutrition into Mental Health Care illuminates the intersection between nutrition and mental health, bridging the gap for professionals in both fields.

It presents resources in areas such as caffeine intake, family history of a genetically transmitted nutrition-related condition, interpretation of laboratory nutritional assessment, and safe upper limits of supplements, as well as additional nutrition factors, helping practitioners easily incorporate selected nutritional aspects into the mental health care of clients. The book includes sample forms for office use and instructions to interpret client information. They can be easily downloaded and printed from the Routledge book page. Additional forms available help in facilitating referral to a registered dietician nutrtionist (RDN) for a deeper look at individual patient’s nutritional issues.

To offer further information on nutrition and metal health, the text features a series of short fictional, but real-life, nutrition stories. These stories provide an enjoyable format in which to train, or test, the reader’s knowledge.

Ruth Leyse Wallace, PhD received her B.S. degree from The University of California at Davis, earned her M.S. degree while completing her dietetic internship at The University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City, and was awarded her Ph.D. from The University of Arizona in Tucson. Her dissertation proposed and validated a Metaparadigm of Clinical Dietetics, an organizing structure for the body of knowledge used by clinical dietetics.

She practiced clinical dietetics in the areas of mental health, eating disorders, substance abuse and general psychiatry at Osawatomie State Hospital in Osawatomie, Kansas, at The Menninger Foundation in Topeka, Kansas, at Sharp Mesa Vista Hospital in San Diego, California and at HCA hospital in Plano, Texas. While in Topeka, in the early 1980s she established one of the first private practices for nutrition counseling in the state. During this time she was commissioned by Fleming Food company, (part of IGA - Independent Grocers of America), to create one of the first sets of consumer nutrition education materials to be exhibited in grocery stores. Dr. Leyse Wallace served as an adjunct faculty member at Pima County College in Tucson and Mesa Community College in San Diego.

Dr. Leyse Wallace has published three books: Nutrition and Mental Health. CRC Press, Taylor and Francis, Publishers, Boca Raton, FL., Linking Nutrition to Mental Health: A Scientific Exploration. iUniverse, Inc., Lincoln, NE. and The Metaparadigm of Clinical Dietetics: Derivation and Applications. also with iUniverse, Inc., as well as chapters in two nutrition textbooks: Integrative and Functional Medical Nutrition Therapy - Principles and Practices. Chapter 30. edited by Diana Noland, RDN & Jeanne Drisko, MD. 2020, and in Krause’s Food and the Nutrition Care Process, Chapter 41: “MNT in Psychiatric and Cognitive Disorders” by Teitelbaum, Jacob, Alan Weiss, Geri Brewster, and Ruth Leyse Wallace. Kathy McMahon, editor.

A fifty-year member of The American Dietetic Association (ADA), now The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, she has been an active contributor to the Behavioral Health Nutrition dietetic practice group in the Academy serving as Mental Health Resource Professional on the Executive Committee and as co-author of the 2018 revision of the Standards of Practice and Standards of Professional Performance for the BHN dietetic practice group. Dr. Leyse Wallace has contributed articles to the group newsletter and presented educational webinars for BHN. In 2010 she was presented the BHN Excellence in Practice award.

Among others, Dr. Leyse Wallace has presented at meetings of The National Alliance on Mental Illness (2012), The Department of Integrative Medicine at University of Kansas Medical Center (2013), and The American Society of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (2003) and a Symposium on the Nutrition Screening Initiative in Washington D.C. (1997).

In 2017 Dr. Leyse Wallace was the recipient of The Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award by the Marquis Who’s Who Publications Board.

Now living in Chandler, Arizona, Dr. Leyse Wallace continues to enjoy writing and corresponding with colleagues, friends and family.