Some people believe that humans do not need to kill animals to thrive, while others believe that animals are food. Living in a society saturated with animal products, non-meat eaters often find it hard to stomach the realities of industrial animal agriculture. The mental health of vegans and vegetarians is rarely addressed within the movement for animal liberation, while debates surrounding physical health are prioritised. I want to begin a dialogue to discuss how veganism impacts mental wellbeing, using my own experiences and ability as a starting point for examining this hushed topic.

Contemporary theories of ecology and ability have produced some excellent discussions on how the environmental and animal rights movements relate to humans and non-humans with differing abilities. I am currently reading Earth, Animal and Disability Liberation: The Rise of the Eco-Ability Movement. This book contains a variety of essays that reveal the subtle intersectionality between the environment, species, and ability, with each writer building on the same principles to create the concept of Eco-Ability. It is a social movement based on the idea of respect and inclusion for all creatures with all abilities. The concept shuns the notion of disability as a social construct, as pinpointing individuals as disabled promotes ‘normalcy’, which has the knock on effect of stigmatising individuals recognised as abnormal. In the book, Anthony Nocella writes an analogy that clarifies the difference between inclusion of humans with dis-abilities and tolerance of them:

“By erecting a standard of normalcy, society devalues diversity. While technology can be a wonderful tool, some technology destroys at the expense of difference, such as by making a paved path through a forest to accommodate everyone instead of making a wheelchair that is meant for off-road use or admitting that some people simply cannot go down that path.”

The book as a whole is a brilliant step to begin a collective liberation movement focusing on both physical and mental ability. Often mental wellbeing does not echo alongside the prominence of physical health in environmentalism and animal liberation movements. Health becomes limited to physical effects, and I might even go as far as saying that these movements are body-centric. Environmentalism warns of unbreathable air, destruction of water supplies, increasing global temperatures, and genetically mutated crops, while Animal Rights discusses nutrition and weight in humans as well as the commodification of animal’s bodies into products.

In a vegan discourse, mental wellbeing has too often been side lined. Even the little discussion available on mental health and cruelty free diets tries to cite blame for mental illness in nutrition. Several studies have concluded that there is a correlation between mental illness and vegetarianism, but conclusions are unable to find the cause in a deficiency of vitamins and refuse to fully examine social conditions. A German study into the link between mental illness and vegetarianism has produced the following judgement:

“Two possible causal mechanisms seem possible. First, because the start of a vegetarian diet, on average, follows the onset of disorder, the experience of a mental disorder may increase the probability of choosing a vegetarian diet (i.e., the mental disorder causes the vegetarian diet). Individuals with a history of a mental disorder may exhibit more perceived health-oriented behavior in order to positively influence the course of their disease. Moreover, the experience of a mental disorder may sensitize individuals to the suffering of other living beings, including animals. In addition, elevated levels of health-related anxiety may lead individuals with mental disorders to choose a vegetarian diet as a form of safety or self-protective behavior, because a meat free diet is perceived as more healthy. Second, a relatively stable psychological mechanism (a third variable) may increase the probability of mental disorders and independently increase the likelihood of choosing a vegetarian diet. The possibility is appealing that psychological mechanisms like the tendency to experience and regulate negative emotions, high levels of responsibility and perfectionism, or contrasting social values of vegetarians might be responsible the pattern of results. However, such possible psychological mechanisms cannot easily explain the temporal sequencing of disorders developing before vegetarian diet.”

The parenthetical sentence ‘the mental disorder causes the vegetarian diet’ is enough to realise the ideological skew inherent in this research and most research conducted on mental health and meat free diets. This reductive carnist logic is resisted and rejected by the ethics of Eco-Ability, as this kind of research is a symptom of the normalisation of mass industrial agriculture. Refusing to eat meat and mental illness are both seen as abnormal in society, and the correlation between the two is reinforcing. But what if society was abnormal? What if there was no concept of normality at all? This study fails to interrogate the structure of capitalism as the root of illness and injustices. Mental wellbeing is re-determined by Eco-Ability as unique for every individual. However, Eco-Ability must also not ignore the proven correlation between veg(etari)anism and mental illness, and produce an explanation for the high levels of mental trauma suffered.

I will begin with the positives that might go towards dispelling the hostile myth that mental illness makes people vegetarian. Like every other vegan I know, I have never been happier since making the transition. It feels liberating to live inside the ethical philosophy I believe in and passionately embrace. I frequently get reminders of my childhood depression, and I contribute a lot of my recovery to growth in political awareness. Now fully vegan, pragmatically abolitionist in principles, I am happy. Food is more exciting than it ever was before. I do not see animals as beneath me, but as companions. My newfound compassion for different species further extends to my own. I can say that my mental wellbeing is healthy, although like my physical health, I will have off-days. I can feel sad, and angry, and excluded, and hurt, and this can come from out of the blue or be the result of small things that are triggering.

Triggering occurs when an action, word, or discussion in the present serves as a reminder to traumatic experiences in an individual’s past. Being triggered by an event does not mean you are mentally ill. It is an understandable reaction to memories of past experiences, which can often be avoided with sensible and compassionate language and dialogue. Many articles on sensitive subjects will have content warnings, alerting readers if a subject is sensitive. Triggers are not limited to language or discussions, they can happen with objects or images, or in my case – meat. For sure I cannot be the only person who associates meat with the violence of animal suffering. I used to disassociate meat with dead animals, but now the link is unavoidable. I try to be around people eating vegan food and avoid non-vegan restaurants because seeing meat is a triggering experience. For me, I plunge into a space of sadness and exhaustion, and depending on the situation, the experience can ripple through the rest of my day. I cannot explain this to my meat eating friends without it sounding like I want to convert them, so I try to take them to vegan restaurants as a kind of safe space and often avoid the topic of food. Sometimes I will ask if they can abstain from animal products around me. Maybe this is selfish of me, asking for their tolerance, but it does remove the potential for triggers. The requirement to ask is an example of how vegan diets are considered abnormal in society and the mental repercussions rarely considered. With a generally healthy mental wellbeing, I can tolerate meat as much as carnists will tolerate vegans. Someone with a different mental ability may have more negative feelings and potentially be subjected to intolerance and exclusion.

Alongside triggered experiences comes anger. A change into a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle forces the individual to reconsider their entire lifestyle, and simultaneously the mechanisms of society. This can result in the build up of internal rage, stress, anxiety, and the experience of exclusion. My rage for animal justice is infrequent, but my rage for environmentalism once spiralled into obsessive-compulsive tendencies. I would either fantasize or follow through with unplugging vending machines, believing that it would save electricity and somewhat help towards deconstructing capitalist domination and abuse. When explaining it to people, I was met with hostility and a lack of compassion or understanding. I was either seen as crazy or funny. Anger is a suitable reaction to political injustices. It can be channelled in various ways, some helpful and some detrimental. But we cannot criticise strong recurrent emotions negatively as they are personal instinctual reactions, and to say these feelings are wrong stigmatises their normalcy. I want to use The Simpsons episode ‘Lisa The Vegetarian’ as an example of an individual experiencing anger and exclusion. Lisa decides to abstain from meat at the same time as Homer decides to host a barbeque. Lisa sabotages the barbeque by stealing the hog roast, and Homer stops speaking to her until she apologises. Lisa’s transition into vegetarianism sees her excluded by her neighbourhood, while a single outburst sees her father follow suit. Homer fails to understand Lisa’s personal experience, and instead of respecting Lisa’s moral difference, he becomes personally offended. Homer not only dismisses vegetarianism but also stigmatises her reaction as abnormal. Lisa’s feelings should not result in her exclusion from society, for she has the right to react and experience emotion.



The emphasis of animal liberation has been and will continue to be placed upon diet. There is also a growing awareness of how diet can affect the environment too, and therefore animal product consumption is a topic recognised within environmentalism. Eating can be a joy, but it can also be very complex. Individuals regulate their food consumption differently suiting their own needs and desires, although an enhanced food consciousness may have a knock on effect to mental wellbeing. An unhealthy relationship with eating can arise from various and often-unknown causes, but an Eco-Ability movement specifically acknowledges how meat-free diets correlate to a broad range of eating ‘disorders’.

Reputable studies have concluded a link between vegetarianism and food consumption-related mental illness. Although an unfortunate truth, we must use this fact to strengthen the animal rights movement by providing support and solidarity to the individuals who are suffering. To deny the link is to maintain veganism as ableist and exclusive, where as progressive Eco-Ability awareness recognises the correlation as a major issue and take action to ensure that the movement is inclusive and respectful, prioritising the mental wellbeing of everyone involved. It can be achieved by firstly moving towards an open discussion of mental health without fear of stigma or judgement. This step has already begun with some excellent blogs dedicated to vegan eating disorder recovery. The second step is to ensure disability liberation runs concurrently with ecological liberation, using the ethics of Eco-Ability to justify the requirements of counselling and psychiatry in a stigma-free society.

The Eco-Ability movement must also be aware of an illness called Orthorexia, which is a mental condition that causes an obsession with eating food that the individual considers healthy and avoiding food the individual considers harmful or unethical. Vegetarians and vegans may be affected by this illness, especially since ethics and nutrition are fundamental topics in the animal rights discourse. While we must remain vigilant for the mental wellbeing of our peers, we must also recognise the condemnation of sufferers with Orthorexia by individuals or even by movements. For instance, the feminist news website Jezebel has used a woman’s Orthorexia as a means to denounce veganism. In an article about vegan blogger Jordan Younger, the title itself insinuates that veganism is a mental illness, ‘Famous Vegan Admits She’s Suffering From an Eating Disorder.’ Even though the website promotes feminism, here Jezebel has been very quick to stigmatise mental illness and criticise the vegan movement for apparently encouraging it. The article reads as more of an ideological attack on veganism rather than a compassionate out reach to the woman suffering from Orthorexia. This is why we need an approach to collective liberation that challenges articles like this with an Eco-Ability-Feminist dialogue.

I have some final thoughts on food consumption-related mental health. Illnesses are not limited to the few discussed by the media, and sometimes they need to be signalled by a peer for an individual to become aware of the issue. Just over a year ago, I became aware of the addictive qualities of processed sugar during my transition towards vegetarianism. Since then I have become incredibly conscious of my sugar consumption, although it has only been within the past 6 months that I have considered it as an addiction. I am aware of how I became addicted, although I also believe that veganism has not helped. Conditions such as addiction can be very serious and often become normalised within society. Both meat and dairy possess psychological and chemical addictive qualities that can make transitioning into ethical diets difficult. I had to wean myself off meat with a flexitarian diet, and when I went ‘cold turkey’ from dairy, I had slight withdrawal symptoms for about a week. The advertising industries refuse to acknowledge the detrimental effects of addictive food products for the simple reason that it will impact profitability.

But I also have some positive thoughts on diet and mental wellbeing, as meat-free diets also have the ability to provide individuals with a sense of control over their own lives. I have met many people who have not considered veganism before and questioned the range of food vegans are able to eat, believing that vegans are at a loss when it comes to choice. But on the contrary, and I am sure that most vegans will agree with me when I say that veganism is liberating. Taking control of what I eat and shunning the capitalist exploitation of animals is uplifting and empowering. I cannot think of anything better for my mental wellbeing than being able to practice my own ethics with every meal.

However, for those who are unfamiliar with animal liberation, it can be difficult to recognise the suffering and torture involved in animal agribusiness. The particular emotion is guilt. Having lived a life believing animals are food, when it comes a point where those principles are challenged, it can be hard to look back. This reaction is typical and nothing to be ashamed of. But at the same time, saying, “well, you don’t have to feel like that if you just go vegan” is unhelpful. I am guilty of saying this on many occasions, as it seems like the obvious response. But these remarks disregard the feelings and experiences of the individual. Some people can immediately abstain from animal products and some require a process of transition. We should not perpetuate a hurry-up attitude, but remain supportive and inclusive and respectful. If a peer needs reassurance, remember your own experience. Perhaps say, “I had that exact same feeling. Is there anything I can do to help?”

While on the topic of Eco-Ability, it is vital to also consider the ability of animals in this movement. I have had many conversations with people (from meat eaters to vegans) who completely deny that animals can experience mental illness. It is a requirement of collective liberation movement to dispel this myth, and highlight the absolute damage of factory farming and dominion over animals. Behavioural studies and compassionate interspecies observations tell stories of animals experiencing various degrees of poor mental health. For instance, dairy cows are particularly known as sufferers of depression. These creatures live through monotonous lifestyles, food bribery, exploitative milk over-production, annual artificial inseminations, and have their calves taken from them year on year to experience the same trauma. All farm and domesticated animals will have different mental states, but they are highly prone to suffer compulsive disorders, anxiety, stress, eating disorders, rage, among other conditions and emotions. Alongside recognising mental health of human animals, Eco-Ability must simultaneously tackle the mental wellbeing and recovery of non-human animals while noting the intrinsic differences between species.

Mental wellbeing is as important as physical wellbeing. This should be represented as part of an ecological movement towards collective liberation, and not merely a side note. In a technological age where the world is becoming increasingly complex, mental health must follow suit. This discourse must continue, but only in a stigma-free environment. The blessing about the Eco-Ability movement is its inclusivity. There are individuals who are certainly more marginalised than others in society, and their voices must not be silenced in this movement. However, each one of us is differently abled in specific ways. I have been diagnosed with dyslexia and attention deficit disorder. My ability means that I may not be able to hold focus without medication, but my high energy levels under pressure and ability to multi-task means that this ability is not entirely negative. Everyone is able to contribute on this planet, and everyone is able to have a voice in this faction for collective liberation.

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Nocella, Anthony (2012), ‘Defining Eco-Ability’, Earth, Animal, and Disability Liberation: The Rise of the Eco-Ability Movement (Quotation from p. XVII)