The Association of Different Types of Intermittent Fasting with Mental Health: A Protocol for Systematic Review

Abstract

The high prevalence of depression, stress, and anxiety imposes a high cost on society. Recently, intermittent fasting (IF) has attracted a great deal of attention regarding the improvement in physical and psychological health. Due to insufficient information in this field, our study will review systematically the effect of different types of IF including religious and nonreligious fasting on mental health. We will search MEDLINE/PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science for papers published from the inception until the end of September 2024. All clinical trial studies that report the effect of intervention through intermittent fasting on mood disorders, stress, depression, and anxiety, in all countries, with their full text available in the English and Persian languages, will be included. Cochrane Risk of Bias Tool for Randomized Controlled Trials will be used to evaluate the quality of evidence in the domains of random sequence generation, allocation concealment, selective reporting, other bias, blinding of participants and personnel, blinding of outcome assessment, and incomplete outcome data. We will conduct the study in accordance with the guideline of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta‑analyses Protocols. Our systematic review will clarify the answer of some important questions like “Does fasting interventions have any effectiveness on stress, anxiety and depression”? and “Are there differences between the effects of Ramadan fasting and other types of fasting on mental health”? It is hoped that the results can provide a new treatment for the most prevalent mental disorders.