A new study, published in The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, sheds light on an urgent yet familiar crisis: children in food-insecure households are significantly more likely to be diagnosed with mood disorders, developmental issues, anxiety, and suicidality.
Led by Dr. Vandad Sharifi from the University of Calgary, the study examined how food insecurity—a condition defined by inadequate or uncertain access to food—affects the mental health of nearly 50,000 Canadian children. The findings are stark: food-insecure children are more likely to report poor mental health, experience psychiatric diagnoses, and use substances like cannabis. Regular alcohol consumption was the only mental health concern examined by the current research that was not linked to food insecurity in children.
“In this nationwide study, food insecurity was significantly associated with almost all studied mental health problems in children and youth, which persisted after controlling for sociodemographic variables such as income,” the authors write. “This is consistent with several other studies that have found associations between child and adolescent food insecurity and various mental health problems, regardless of income level.”
But this framing, which situates these children as “ill,” risks obscuring the social and political realities that shape their suffering. When hunger is seen as a “risk factor for mental illness” rather than a public health failure, the burden is placed on individuals rather than systems. The findings of this study should prompt a shift in focus—from diagnosing children to addressing the conditions in which they live.
Put rats in a cage with insufficient food and they are bound to get distressed. We don’t call that mental illness do we. Next…
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It is interesting to note how experimenters get mice or whatever into the proper “mental” state to test their drugs. They seem to always STRESS the poor little creatures until they are anxious or depressed or whatever.
See the Rat Park experiment or Harlow’s Monkeys. Environment completely alters animal behavior, for the better or the worse. Clearly should apply to humans…
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Reminds me of Gaza.
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Let’s have a comprehensive study conducted on the mental state and motivation of food company and supermarket owners, chain restaurant executives, and school cafeteria providers who purvey addictive, fattening, sugar-rich, low-nutrition products that fuel the worldwide spread of obesity, diabetes, cancer, and other health problems attributable to a poor diet. Why is it always the victims of this unconscionable racket who attract the attention of researchers?
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When food is scarce you have to make do and mend, as us British used always to say, and sing cheerful rhymes, for example: “Hitler has only got one ball – the other is in the Albert Hall. His mother, a dirty bugger, chopped it off when Hitler was small. She threw it into the apple tree, the wind blew it into the deep blue sea, and then the fishes got out their dishes, and ate scallops and bollocks for tea.”
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“A world where children go hungry is not one in which more prescriptions or diagnoses will suffice. It is a world in desperate need of equity, compassion, and systemic change.”
But sadly, too many within the “we want to maintain the status quo” psy-“professions” stand against changing the “status quo” … since changing the “BS,” of the mainstream DSM deluded “status quo,” is truly imperative, IMHO.
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Food affects mood, especially a chronic or unpredictably sporadic lack of it. Its nutrients are the building blocks for the body’s naturally occurring neurotransmitters that affect people’s moods.
As a small child I needed to be fed like clockwork or else I would dissolve into tears of exhaustion tinged with a gnawing (and frightening) anxiety.
Never having to worry when or if you will be fed is vitally important to a child’s sense of psychological, emotional and bodily safety besides being the source of physical nourishment and energy.
Chronic food insecurity in children is a trauma that can last a lifetime.
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“Chronic food insecurity in children is a trauma that can last a lifetime.” Agreed, and my understanding is that the trauma of food insecurity and trauma itself is known to affect subsequent generations too, both in terms of behaviour and gene expression, which are just two markers within the whole human system and the effects may be much more extensive still. For example it would be difficult for science in it’s present form to assess the effects on the subsequent generation of food insecurity on patterns of thinking, feeling, and physical sensation, which is the very force, form and texture of our whole lives. I think it’s clear that the effects of food insecurity radiate out to the whole of society, effecting the lives even of people like Elon Musk and Goeff Bazos (or however you spell vampire), because in contrast to the poverty of citizens these grifters are seen and no doubt on some level see themselves as that bit more greedy and evil then if all American children were at least housed and fed, and this consciousness of evil makes evil more manifest and therefore active. If you know deep down you are greedy then you’ll behave accordingly, and I really think this holds for them.
But of course the more serious effects is on the emotional health of the whole of society, and the immeasurable effects on those who have no capacity to think about education or career or happiness because they have to fight to put food on the table, an exhausting fight that leaves no energy for anything else, and when despite this you are failing to do put the food on the table this is traumatic for a single parent, but catastrophic, surely, for the emotional health of a parent. I just can’t imagine how a parent must feel about themselves and their lives if they have to sleep in the car with their children: surely they must have to hide these feelings from themselves in order to survive. I know that’s not food poverty but I imagine not being able to feed your children has these same kind of effects.
In my shithole country, the UK (almost all countries are shitholes so no offence intended!), I saw a documentary a few years ago about homeless families, and there was this family living in a B&B (similar to your motels), without any cooking facilities, not even a mcrowave, and just a kettle to heat water, a little girl of perhaps 8 or 9 years old was being interviewed in the room they shared telling us that for dinner she has a pot noodle (I don’t know if that’s what you call them in the US but you just add hot water), along with a tin of baked beans, the latter which she warms by placing it on the radiator heater all day, and it is barely warm. And things have deteriorated a great deal since then with poverty booming and food banks no longer providing the level of assistance they once could, sometimes even charging a small fee for entry. Once I went to a foodbank when I had no money and was told they now charged £2 and I didn’t have a penny, which was OK because I could get food elsewhere, but I was in horror at the thought that this could be happening to single mothers or fathers who turn up and are told they must pay, and the difficulty of them finding alternative food while also trying to look after their kids may be a insurmountable obsticle. This is probably happening across the country every day and no-body even knows and probably has not the capacity to care anymore, because they can smell a disaster unfolding – believe it or not, when I ask people in the UK if they think a total social collapse is coming, it is rare that people answer negatively – I am not joking. And I find that as a result there is a withdrawal of compassion and care, with homeless people also getting a worse and worse time, especially if they are immigrants. People go through absolute hell. Imagine being an asylum seeker female sleeping in a cold bus shelter by the sea without any sleeping bag – I saw it just the other day, although it is possible she wasn’t an asylum seeker – she appeared to be so. To me it is absolutely intolerable to see that and how we can tolerate all this is beyond me now.
To imagine that three potential political candidates for Trump’s cabinet has over 200 billion dollars each (and Musk alone has over $400 billion), each therefore having enough to feed all hungry people the world over for generations (indeed they could give everyone on Earth easily over $100 dollars, so if it was concentrated on those who were truly hungry, most of them being in areas where grains are a fraction of Western prices this money would solve global hunger for generations.) It should be clear to us all that this disgusting level of wealth is such an enormous abomination and such a total betrayal of global humanity that one day this absolutely enormous level of greed will be seen as the epitome of the darkness and insanity of our present societies.
Think of the joy and happiness and tears you or I would feel personally being able to save a genuinely starving family with $100 dollars, thus diverting an enormous tragedy that you have witnessed happening with your own eyes. Now that is truly value for money. Some idiotic vampire having over $400 billion is by contrast $400 billion not just wasted, but invested in someone who more then anybody else on Earth is profiting heavily out of the total destruction of the Earth and enslavement of humanity, and is perhaps one of the worst betrayers of the whole of humanity and the Earth. Electric cars are not of any value if you’re in a Trump team who are going to ensure there is no action taken to reduce fossil fuels – quite the reverse. Anyway, if you ask me we would be better off sending all these billionaire supreme pigs to the pork chop factory and liquidating them in order to solve all the worlds problems.
Just think – the United Nations has struggled for a decade to fulfil their pledge to give a mere $100 billion to countries that are experiencing catastrophic effects of climate change, e.g. Pakistan in which a third of the country was flooded. Three potential Trump cabinet appointees have over double that amount as personal wealth, and one has 4 times that amount. So ALL the rich countries on Earth have still failed to come up with a collective $100 billion promised to cover the environmental effects of their greed, but these unfortunate billionaire parasites could afford to lose at least twice that much each from their personal wealth today. So either these billionaires have way too much money or rich countries don’t have enough. Obviously it’s the former because the wealth of the rich countries is held by the wealthy, and the nation as a whole get’s mere scraps and crumbs, even though they do all the work. Sorry, as soon as I open my gob about these things words of contempt spew out as I get carried away. And I’m sure you feel the same way anyway. Thanks for remembering and caring about this food poverty because it is like a ray of light these days to hear anyone mention the important things. I even get emotional when I hear someone giving a shit on TV because it’s so rare.
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I predicted the rise of the Amercian oligarch long ago. I kept hoping it wouldn’t happen, but it has. It’s been painful watching it slowly come true.
Many public policy decisions are responsible for the exploding homeless population and the disappearance of a healthy American middle class here in the US.
One of the most disturbing things is how our tax code has been tweaked to favor the uber-wealthy while society as a whole is forced to pay the price in tragic ways.
I don’t think it’s hard to imagine how that happened.
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I’m glad there’s more data these days to support what is true. Even if it sucks that such a thing is necessary.
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