Maternal and Adolescent Mental HealthHousehold Food Insecurity and Mental Health Problems Among Adolescents: What Do Parents Report?
Section snippets
Methods
We used publicly available data from the 2007 (8th grade) wave of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Kindergarten (ECLS-K) class of 1998–1999, a study that followed a large and nationally representative cohort of children from kindergarten until 8th grade. A detailed description of the ECLS-K methodology is available online (http://nces.ed.gov/ecls/kindergarten.asp).17
Data were obtained primarily from the ECLS-K 8th grade parent interview, which was conducted by telephone using a
Results
In this sample, 10.2% of adolescents lived in households with food insecurity, and 11.2% were reported by their parents to have problems with MH. The characteristics of the sample and relationships with HFI and with adolescent MH are shown in Table 1. Grade level, poverty status, income below the poverty threshold, parent not married, level of parent education, fair/poor parent health, parent depression, receipt of free/reduced-price school lunch, unsafe school, unsafe neighborhood, and number
Discussion
This study utilized data from a nationally representative survey of children in the United States and demonstrated that exposure to HFI is independently associated with a more than 2-fold increase in risk of parent-reported MH problems of adolescents. This finding is particularly concerning, given the fact that at least 1 in 5 US households with children <18 years old is food insecure, and an even higher percentage of children and families living in poverty are food insecure.2
MH disorders have
Acknowledgment
This investigation was supported in part by MCHB 2777MC00009.
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Transient food insecurity during the juvenile-adolescent period affects adult weight, cognitive flexibility, and dopamine neurobiology
2022, Current BiologyCitation Excerpt :After COVID-19, numbers have increased worldwide.4 The epidemiological literature shows that children and adolescents who have experienced food insecurity are at higher risk for a number of mental health and behavioral problems,5–11 including internalizing and externalizing behaviors7,10,12 and issues with self-control.10,13 Food insecurity is also associated with differences in learning,14 lower IQ metrics,15 and worse math, reading, and vocabulary scores.16,17
Addressing Food Insecurity in Primary Care
2021, Journal for Nurse PractitionersCitation Excerpt :In this study, approximately 10% of adolescents experienced household FI, and approximately 11% of scores of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) were indicative of mental health problems. Adolescents with FI exhibited higher rates of mental health problems (28% compared with 9%), and after adjusting for confounding variables, those with FI were more than twice as likely to experience mental health problems.18 Another study sought to determine whether severity of household FI had an impact on the mental health of children and adolescents.19
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.