Short answer: YES
Longer answer: I switched recently from going down the bitcoin rabbit-hole do the carnivore rabbit hole. Based on all the information I've gleaned, I'm going to say YES, a keto/carnivore diet can, for many people, much of the time, significantly help many mental health issues. This includes even the most serious, treatment-resistant problems.
In this post, I'm going to lay out why I think the carnivore diet can help with mental disorders, and the materials you may want to look at. Please consider this as a public service announcement for my fellow stackers. I have gained so much benefit from this diet that I just want to spread the word to potentially like-minded people. People like us, who are skeptical of the info that's out there in the mainstream.
If you're completely new to the idea that the current nutritional guidelines are complete garbage, then I strongly recommend the book The Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholtz. I wrote an entire post about it: This book is blowing my mind - The Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholtz. The book took her 10 years to write, and it's very well documented. As a matter of fact, I got to around 50% in the book (kindle edition) and it ended suddenly - the rest of the book is all footnotes and bibliography.
Once I absorbed that book, I was fired up. I was ready for new ideas on what I should be eating. The subtitle to Nina Teicholtz's book is "Why Butter, Meat and Cheese belong in a Healthy Diet". I increased my meat and egg consumption a lot, but didn't go full-on carnivore. However, I did start reading a lot more about the carnivore diet, and listening to podcasts. My favorite carnivore podcasters are Dr. Shawn Baker and Dr. Anthony Chafee.
Most people go carnivore to lose weight, or to fix an auto-immune disease. But I started listening to a substantial number of podcasts from people who had overcome serious mental issues, just by switching to a carnivore diet.
Then I read the book by Dr. Georgia Ede - Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind. It's an outstanding book, she goes through the science of why the standard diet probably is actually causing the huge increase in mental health issues that we, as a society, have been experiencing. She then goes into the specifics about how a low-carb or keto or carnivore diet can help and in her experience, even cure these issues.
Here's a good quote from the book:
I was genuinely shocked to learn that there is absolutely no science (or logic) behind recommendations to eat plant-based diets, balanced diets, high-fiber diets, low-cholesterol diets, or diets containing whole grains, low-fat dairy products, or rainbows of fruits and vegetables. At best, these ideas represent well-intentioned guesses based on deeply flawed, unscientific food questionnaires; at worst, they are intentional distortions of the facts designed to protect professional reputations or serve political and commercial agendas, not to protect and serve public health.
The truth about nutrition is this: Meat is not dangerous, vegan diets are not healthier, and antioxidants are not the answer. So, where can we look for answers?
The good news is that hiding underneath that mountain of biased, confusing guesswork are clear, elegant, compelling scientific principles about nutrition that make intuitive sense, work in clinical practice, and stand the test of time. Do we know everything we wish we knew? No. Do we know more than enough for you to substantially improve your brain health starting today? Absolutely.
Dr. Ede in her book lays out some diet strategies in her book, ranging from low-carb to keto to carnivore. I didn't get much from the strategy sections, since I was already successfully on carnivore.
Dr. Shawn Baker, on his podcasts, has some great success stories. He interviews people very regularly, and his podcast backlog has hundreds of stories, many of them from people with mental health challenges. His interview on the Joe Rogan podcast, about 6 years ago, was what started lots of people on the carnivore path. (https://open.spotify.com/episode/2auwtVto0sG7OcZ0hs3aOP)
For me personally, I didn't suffer from any severe mood issues. But going completely carnivore has resulted in much more energy, much more positivity, and much more optimism. And less brain fog, and a better memory. I have what they call "carnivore calm". Also, a persistent (and getting worse) body-related OCD type disorder that I had pre-carnivore just...disappeared. Just gone, I didn't do anything besides the carnivore diet. Many, many people have this experience.
Here's a previous post on my experiences on the carnivore diet: Latest steps in my carnivore path - and why you should consider a carnivore diet
Is the carnivore diet always easy? Nope. Aside from the occasional logistical difficulty of eating with people, there are some things that can crop up especially at the beginning, like keto flu, oxalate dumping, diarrhea. I didn't get the keto flu or diarrhea because I transitioned over the course of a month into carnivore. But I have had symptoms of oxalate dumping, which I'm managing pretty well. Just know that it can be a thing, but that there's also ways to relieve it. For oxalate dumping in particular, the book Toxic Superfoods is good for some solutions. Don't expect mainstream medicine to have anything at all to help.