A private foundation funds the CME an entire field skipped
- Metabolic Mind, a nonprofit clinician hub, hosts a free AMA PRA Category 1 CME course, "Brain Energy: The Metabolic Theory of Mental Illness," taught by Chris Palmer and hosted on MyCME.com, at metabolicmind.org/for-clinicians/free-cme-courses/.
- Palmer is a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School and McLean Hospital and author of the 2022 book "Brain Energy." The course presents his theory that mitochondrial dysfunction is a shared mechanism across depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia.
- Metabolic Mind launched in 2022 as an initiative of the Baszucki Group, the philanthropic vehicle of Roblox founder David Baszucki and writer Jan Ellison Baszucki, who began funding metabolic-psychiatry research in 2019 after their son's recovery from bipolar disorder through ketogenic therapy.
- Palmer's course went live on October 4, 2024, alongside a second free CME title by psychiatrist Georgia Ede. Both are free, with no stated license for reuse of the material. For contrast, not as a source: Ede's own separate, longer clinician training program on ketogenic diets, sold through her site Diagnosis Diet, costs $750 in its self-paced form.
No psychiatric association has built a free, accredited course on the metabolic theory of mental illness. A private family foundation has. Since October 2024, clinicians can take "Brain Energy: The Metabolic Theory of Mental Illness," a free AMA PRA Category 1 CME course by Chris Palmer, a Harvard Medical School psychiatrist at McLean Hospital, hosted on MyCME.com through Metabolic Mind's clinician page. It is a first, credentialed entry point into a hypothesis most training programs never assign: that mitochondrial dysfunction is a shared mechanism across depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia.
A foundation, not a society, wrote the syllabus
Metabolic Mind is not a professional body. It is a nonprofit launched in 2022 by the Baszucki Group, the philanthropic vehicle of Roblox founder David Baszucki and his wife, writer Jan Ellison Baszucki, who began funding metabolic-psychiatry research in 2019 after their son's bipolar disorder led the family to ketogenic therapy. That history funds the infrastructure directly: the same October 2024 launch put a second free CME title online, Georgia Ede's "Managing Major Mental Illness with Dietary Change." No APA, AAP, or WPA curriculum on brain-energy theory exists at this scale for free. The nearest paid comparison, not a source but a marker of cost, is Ede's own separate clinician training program on ketogenic diets, sold through her practice site Diagnosis Diet for $750 in its self-paced form – a broader, multi-module program, not a single lecture, but it shows what the field otherwise charges to teach related material.
What the free course does not settle
The hub around Palmer's course leans toward ketogenic-diet implementation rather than the theory itself – most of its listed courses cover keto mechanics, cardiovascular safety, or diabetes management, so a clinician after the brain-energy hypothesis specifically should go straight to Palmer's title rather than work through the list. Nothing on the page states a license for the material: no terms for reuse in teaching, no review or expiration date for the content. The credit itself is real and verifiable on MyCME.com, but a clinician who wants to fold slides or summaries into their own teaching has no stated permission to do so, and no signal that the course will be updated as the underlying evidence moves.
For a specialist who wants a first, no-cost, credentialed orientation to the brain-energy hypothesis before deciding whether to read Palmer's book or discuss metabolic interventions with patients, the course fills a gap that a niche field has not otherwise closed for free.
A private family foundation, not a professional society, built the only free, accredited course on the metabolic theory of mental illness.
No license is stated for the course content, so reuse in teaching is unclear, and the page gives no review or expiration date. The course sits inside a hub weighted toward ketogenic-diet mechanics, with the brain-energy hypothesis itself addressed directly by only one course. It reflects funding from a foundation with a personal stake in metabolic psychiatry, not editorial input from an independent professional body.