Shielding children from food insecurity and its association with mental health and well-being in Canadian households.

Abstract

Adults in food-insecure households will often sacrifice their own nutritional needs so that children are fed first. This shielding may protect children from malnutrition, but its links to mental health and well-being have not been closely examined. The aim of this study is to explore these links. We used data from three cycles of the Canadian Community Health Survey (n = 28,871 youth, 74,416 adults) to identify shielded children (those who reported not being food insecure but lived in food-insecure households). Using Poisson regression, we examined youth and adult mental health and well-being (mood disorder, anxiety disorder, fair/poor mental health, fair/poor health, and low life satisfaction) in shielding households compared to food-secure households and food-insecure households where children were not shielded. About one in six (15.3%) households with children was food insecure. One third of these (6.3%) included children who were shielded from experiencing food insecurity. Shielded youth did not differ significantly from food-secure youth in three of the five outcomes examined. However, unshielded youth, compared to food-secure youth, showed increased risks of every health outcome we investigated. Adults in food-insecure households also reported worse mental health than food-secure adults but better mental health if children were shielded. Shielding is associated with reduced risk of common psychiatric outcomes and poor mental health in youth and adults, possibly because it is associated with milder forms of food insecurity. The inability to protect children from having inadequate access to food may compound the psychological strain of food insecurity on mental health and well-being among adults.