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Home • Beauty

This Chef Says Veganism Helped Heal Her Anxiety & Eczema

In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, Bethany Morrison opens up about the diet that helped her reclaim control over her life.
This Chef Says Veganism Helped Heal Her Anxiety & Eczema
Courtesy of Braylen Dion
By India Espy-Jones · Updated May 22, 2025

“Eight years ago, I had a mental breakdown in my room,” chef Bethany Morrison tells ESSENCE. “At the time, I would’ve rather lived a shorter life than live with anxiety.” But, her diet saved her life. Between drinking nothing but water, taking a behavior modification class, and watching the Netflix documentary What The Health, “I got a gut feeling to go vegan for 30 days as a challenge,” Morrison says. “Throughout those 30 days, I went that entire time without an anxiety attack” for the first time in seven years. 

According to the American Society of Nutrition (ASN), the relationship between nutrition and mental health is bidirectional, which means our diet impacts our mental health and vice versa. Veganism, a diet removing all animal-source food and byproducts from their diet, has been increasing in popularity over the past few years. And, although veganism is touted for its ethics, often pushed by PETA for its “healthy and humane” nature, studies show the mental health benefits of the diet vary by person to person.

This Chef Says Veganism Helped Heal Her Anxiety & Eczema

Growing up in a Jamaican household, foods like bully beef, oxtail, and chicken foot soup was tradition for Morrison, while fast foods like McDonald’s and KFC were what she’d eat if her family didn’t cook. Although she couldn’t pinpoint any specific food as a trigger for her anxiety, cheese (her favorite food) and eggs were, at times, associated with her severe migraines. “I struggled with painful headaches and regularly went to see a neurologist from a very young age,” she says, taking Excedrin to get rid of the seething pain. 

By the time she was 15, she was sent to a boarding school in upstate New York (ironically, they only served vegan and vegetarian food), which is when her anxiety first began. “The anxiety didn’t come on immediately, but many months after attending that school,” she says, not being able to put a name to the feeling until she started college. As a freshman, her school required her to fill out a mental health form. Her answers, in particular, were flagged by the mental health department which helped her put a name to the overwhelming feeling for the very first time: anxiety.

However, that didn’t stop it from happening. By senior year, the anxiety-managing techniques she used as a teen stopped working, which meant going to sleep and waking up next to anxiety was routine. To the point, a mental breakdown that left her suicidal pushed her to take back control of her body, and for Morrison, this meant a new diet. “Anyone who struggles terribly with anxiety, understands how crippling it is,” she says. But, she didn’t consciously turn to veganism for her mental health. Shockingly, “the thought of overcoming anxiety didn’t come to mind.”

This Chef Says Veganism Helped Heal Her Anxiety & Eczema

Naturally, with her changing diet, her interest in culinary arts bubbled to the surface. From doing food pop-ups to meal prepping and creating vegan menus for a Brooklyn jazz club, she quit psychology and law (which were the fields she went into during and after college, respectively) to attend culinary school. For the past year, she’s been working for a personal chef company cooking for seven different households throughout New York City, all while running a vegan food page, Likkle Vegan Tings, where she shares recipes and takes private bookings.

But, Veganism is more than just a diet. “I started to break out on the side of both of my arms and I found out, it was my body basically detoxing itself from all of the junk I’ve had,” she says. Dealing with eczema her entire life, she says she never thought she’d live without the condition, which affected her hair and scalp the most. “When I entirely went Vegan in 2017, it never came back and it’s insane to think about,” she says, intentionally using vegan and plant-based beauty brands like Saie Beauty and COSRX. Along with exercise, like strength-training and long walks, beauty and wellness is a form of self-care because “I’ve seen the detriment that happens to people when they don’t make it a priority.”

This Chef Says Veganism Helped Heal Her Anxiety & Eczema

With food and stress-relieving exercise doubling as skincare, “my normal daily diet consists of a lot of beans, legumes, fermented foods, vegetables and fruits of every kind, homemade sauces and dips,” she says. While some weeks she says she eats the same meals consistently, “other weeks, I find myself cooking different meals everyday and even after cooking for 1-2 clients on certain days, I’d still rather come home and cook a meal.”

While some studies show a balanced diet, consisting of fruit, vegetables, dairy, protein and grain, is healthier than a vegan diet, Morrison points out nutrient deficiencies can happen even if you’re non-vegan. “There’s this misconception that people who follow a more plant-based lifestyle don’t receive enough nutrients or protein,” she says. “It isn’t true.” With vegan chefs like Donna’s Recipe’s Tabitha Brown and Erykah Badu normalizing the diet in the Black community, veganism turned into Morrison’s medicine for anxiety. “I strongly believe when we take care of ourselves and be intentional with our choices — whether it’s food or beauty, it will definitely show.”

TOPICS:  anxiety diet culture mental health awareness month vegan diet