Abstract
Abstract
Background
Youth who go hungry have poorer mental health than their counterparts – there are gender differences in this relationship. This study investigated the role of social support in the association between hunger and mental health among a nationally representative sample of youth in Canada in gender-specific analyses.
Methods
We used a probability-based sample of 21,750 youth in grades 6–10 who participated in the 2017–2018 Canadian Health Behaviour in School-aged Children. Self-report data were gathered on hunger, mental health (measured via the World Health Organization-5 well-being index) and five sources of support – peer, family and teacher support as well as the school climate and neighborhood support. We conducted adjusted, gender-specific, multilevel regression analyses assessing the association between mental health, social support and hunger.
Results
We found that youth who reported lower support were more likely to experience going to bed hungry (relative to never hungry) across all support factors. As for the social support factors, all the social support factors were associated with a higher mental health score, even after controlling for hunger. Despite these results our final set of models showed that our measures of social support did not alleviate the negative association between hunger and mental health. As for gender-specific findings, the negative association between hunger and a mental health was more pronounced among females relative to their male counterparts. We also found that certain social support factors (i.e., family, teacher and neighborhood support) were associated with a higher mental health score among females relative to males while controlling for hunger status.
Conclusions
We find that five social support factors are associated with a higher mental health score among ever hungry youth; however, social support did not overpower the negative association between hunger and mental health. Food insecurity is a challenge to address holistically; however, hungry youth who have high social support have higher odds of better mental health.
Funder
Canadian Institutes of Health Research
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Subject
Nutrition and Dietetics,Medicine (miscellaneous)
Reference36 articles.
1. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. (2019). The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World. Retrieved January 15, 2020, from Tge State of the World website: http://www.fao.org/state-of-food-security-nutrition/en/.
2. Davis, B., & Tarasuk, V. (1994). Hunger in Canada. Agric Hum Values https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01530416.
3. Statistics Canada. (2019). Household food security by living arrangement. Retrieved November 18, 2019, from Data website: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1310038501.
4. Roshanafshar, S., & Hawkins, E. (2015). Food insecurity in Canada. In Health at a Glance - Statistics Canada (Vol. 82).
5. Ashiabi, G. S., & O’Neal, K. K. (2008). A framework for understanding the association between food insecurity and children’s developmental outcomes. Child Dev Perspect https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1750-8606.2008.00049.x.
Cited by
6 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献