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• The Men’s Table evaluation
• 2021 Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) Consumer-Led Research Grant (2021-ongoing): This project brings together lived experience organisations, health services and health researchers to increase the capacity of primary care services to provide evidence-based preventive care for mental ill-health. Collaboratively, we have co-designed this project and are evaluating an evidence-based peer support intervention in the primary care setting in Australia
• Integrated Psychosocial Teamlets: A proposal for funding a new model of primary care (pilot)
• The Living-well Club (TLC) at Parklands Low Acuity Accommodation (PLAA): A volunteer-led social prescribing program to improve the biopsychosocial health of inpatients and staff.
• Lives Lived Well drug and alcohol recovery centre: a lifestyle medicine intervention/pilot to determine if nutrition and movement can improve mental health and recovery outcomes in residents of Lives Lived Well facilities.

• Mechanisms of action of ketogenic metabolic therapy in psychiatry
• Nutrition, gut microbiome and mental health
• Stress, resilience and mental health
• The North Queensland Dietary Intervention Trial (NQDIT) is a Randomised Clinical Trial of dietary interventions in 100 non-hospitalised patients with either Bipolar Disorder or Schizophrenia Spectrum disorders in Townsville, Australia. The study is led by Prof Zoltan Sarnyai and A/Prof Carlo Longhitano at ·¬ÇÑÉçÇø and Townsville University Hospital. The active (intervention) group is instructed to consume a Modified Ketogenic Diet (KD), whereas the control group is instructed to follow a diet in accordance with the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating (AGHE), for a duration of 14 weeks. Recent preclinical and non-randomised clinical trial data suggests that the KD may be effective in addressing underlying bioenergetic alterations in patients with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, in addition to improving metabolic parameters. This line of research is attracting considerable interest from the scientific mental health community as well as those with lived experiences of severe mental disorders, who are awaiting the results of a rigorously conducted RCT. To our knowledge, the proposed study will be the first in the world to address the question of efficacy and feasibility of ketogenic therapy in community patients with psychosis.
• The study is currently taking new participants and we had the first completers through. Completion is expected in June 2025.
• More information and to enrol new participants, visit the trial website:

Dr Sam Manger is a Clinical and Academic General Practitioner and Healthcare Consultant with a focus on addressing the lifestyle and social determinants. He is the Academic Lead and Senior Lecturer of the postgraduate suite (Master, Graduate Diploma, and Graduate Certificate) in Lifestyle Medicine at ·¬ÇÑÉçÇø College of Medicine and Dentistry, as well as the Immediate Past-President of the Australasian Society of Lifestyle Medicine.

He is an ambassador for Equally Well Australia, Advisory Group Member of the RACGP Shaping a Healthy Australia project and Handbook of Non-Drug Interventions (HANDI), host of The GP Show podcast (ranked in the top 1% of podcasts worldwide) for health professionals and was awarded the RACGP QLD GP of the Year in 2021.

Tahnee Motti is Public Health consultant with a focus on behaviour change, lifestyle medicine and translating theory into practice. She is deeply passionate about the impact of social and environmental determinants on health outcomes and believes in the transformative potential of behaviour change interventions and lifestyle modifications to enhance both population health and individual well-being. Tahnee’s experience is in research, designing and developing health promotion and behaviour change interventions, and evaluation studies. Tahnee currently works as a Research and Implementation Fellow at ·¬ÇÑÉçÇø and as a private consultant.

Dr Ruth Eagles is a clinical and academic General Practitioner, with a passion for Lifestyle Medicine and preventive health care. She has extensive experience in postgraduate health professional education in both Australia and Fiji and brings to the Lifestyle Medicine team an enthusiastic and innovative approach to teaching and learning in the Lifestyle Medicine courses. Ruth is currently undertaking a PhD, investigating the implementation and evaluation of a GP-led Family Lifestyle clinic.

Dr Carlo Longhitano MBBS, FRANZCP is a specialist in forensic and general psychiatry, having trained in Italy and the United Kingdom. Since 2018, he has been working for the community forensic mental health services in Townville, where he supports local courts, police, and other mental health services in managing some of the most challenging aspects of mental illness.

Carlo has a global understanding of cultural issues and how they affect our resilience in the face of trauma and adversities.

Carlo’s research interest has progressed from the neurosciences of affective disorders to the specific effects of nutritional and lifestyle interventions in bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. He is a PhD candidate at the Psychiatric Neuroscience laboratory at ·¬ÇÑÉçÇø with a project investigating nutritional factors in mental health and in particular the effects of ketogenic diet on brain metabolism. Carlo is the co-lead investigator in the NQDIT trial of ketogenic diet in bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. He is also a member of the Baszucki Brain Research Fund’s Clinical Trials working group and a committee member of the International Society for Nutritional Psychiatry Research. You might say, he genuinely believes that "you can eat your way to mental health".

Zoltán is Professor at ·¬ÇÑÉçÇø. He was previously University Lecturer in the Department of Pharmacology, University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Pembroke College, where he was Director of Studies for Medicine. He trained at McLean Hospital at Harvard Medical School and at The Rockefeller University, supported by the DuPont-Warren Award and a NARSAD Young Investigator Award, respectively. His group described the role of stress neuropeptides oxytocin and corticotropin-releasing factor in addiction, for which he was awarded the Richter Prize by the International Society of Psychoneuroendocrinology and the efficacy of ketogenic diet in preclinical models of schizophrenia. Professor Sarnyai was appointed Lady Davis Visiting Professor at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology to study the neuro-metabolic aspects of schizophrenia. He currently serves as Chief Scientific Advisor for the Tropical Brain and Mind Foundations and is on the Executive Committee for the International Society for Nutritional Psychiatry Research. He is Associate Editor for Nutritional Neuroscience and Frontiers in Neuroscience, and editorial board member of Stress.

Sharon has over 20 years' experience as a dietitian delivering nutrition and health coaching programs in addition to seminars to GPs, practice nurses and health professionals. She is a leading figure in health coaching, communication and behaviour change and has developed accredited Health Coaching training to train health professionals as part of Accredited Health Coaching Australia.