TITLE
SMILES
Supporting the Modification of Lifestyle In Lowered Emotional States’ (SMILES).
Objective: To evaluate if a structured dietary support, focusing on improving diet quality using a modified Mediterranean diet model, would be superior to a social support control condition (befriending) in reducing the severity of depressive symptomatology
Design: A 12-weeks, parallel group, single blinded randomised controlled trial whereby researchers responsible for mental health assessment were blinded to the group allocation
Population: All patients with moderate to severe depression based on the MADRS scale
Sample: 67 patients recruited from two Health centres in Victoria, Australia (Barwon Health in Geelong and St. Vincent’s Health in Melbourne
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Given that the population refers to all patients suffering from moderate to mild depression, the sample was unrepresentative of the population
Volunteering Sampling Method
Non-probability sampling were done through interviews, advertisements in social media and flyer distribution to identify participants. Patient’s consent were needed before they are taken into the study.
Different characteristics within the two groups
While there are no expected confounders within the study as it is a randomised controlled trial, due to the small sampling size, both the treatment and control group possess different characteristics which affect the accuracy of the result
Smoking
There are more smokers in the social support group (17.6%) as compared to the dietary support group (10%). Research shown that nicotine (a compound found in cigarettes) damages certain pathways in the brain which may trigger mood swings and cause depression. Thus, dietary intervention may seem to be more effective in alleviating depression as the dietary support group has fewer smokers compared to the social support