Moderate-to-severe household food insecurity is associated with depression among adolescent girls in northern Ghana: a cross-sectional analysis

Abstract

ObjectiveHousehold food insecurity is positively associated with depression; however, the association among adolescents is not well known. We examined the association between household food insecurity and depression among adolescent girls in Northern Ghana.MethodsWe analysed data from the Ten2Twenty-Ghana randomised controlled trial end-line for adolescent girls aged 10–17 years (n=582). The girls were chosen at random from 19 primary schools in the Mion District of Ghana’s northern region. The children’s depression inventory and the Food Insecurity Experience Scale were used in face-to-face interviews to assess depression and household food insecurity. Hierarchical survey binary logistic regression and linear mixed models were used to examine the association between household food insecurity and depressive symptoms. We took into account a number of potential confounders in the analysis, such as life satisfaction, self-efficacy, self-esteem, health complaints, child’s age, menarche status, pubertal development, anaemia, stunting, frequency of consuming fruits and vegetables, frequency of consuming animal-sourced foods, maternal age, household wealth index and size, and the intervention group the girl was assigned to in the trial.ResultsAbout 20.1% of adolescent girls were classified as likely depressed, and 70.3% of their households were food insecure, with 22.9% and 18.0% being moderately and severely food insecure, respectively. Compared with girls from food-secure households, those from moderately (adjusted OR (AOR) 2.63, 95% CI (1.35 to 5.12)) and severely (AOR 3.28, 95% CI (1.66 to 6.49)) food insecure households had about three times the odds of being classified as depressed, after controlling for potential confounders. The odds of being likely depressed were about twice for adolescent girls from food-insecure households compared with their peers from food-secure households in both the crude and final adjusted model.ConclusionThe study discovered high levels of household food insecurity and depression in adolescent girls in Northern Ghana, with a dose-response association between the two.

Do crop diversity and livestock production improve smallholder intra-household dietary diversity, nutrition and sustainable food production? Empirical evidence from Pakistan

“…Consistent with prior studies, we identified a strong positive correlation between CDI and DDS at the district level (Dabo et al, 2013;Singh et al, 2020;Dereje et al, 2021;Derso et al, 2021;Mengistu et al, 2021;Azupogo et al, 2023). There is empirical support for a beneficial link between crop diversity and dietary diversity, which two distinct mechanisms may mediate: (1) by providing a farmer's household with a variety of food groups to consume and (2) by providing a variety of crops that can be sold to the market to generate income that is used to purchase a wider variety of foods from markets (Achterbosch et al, 2014;Hill and Vigneri, 2014;Ntakyo and van den Berg, 2019;Baker et al, 2020;Soukand et al, 2020).…”

Sustainable Food Consumption and Production in the 21st Century

“…Similarly, there is high profitability and environmental damage in the lower section of the cascade. Wickramasinghe et al (2023) and Kulasinghe and Dharmakeerthi (2022) have supported this finding in the same cascade, indicating that high accumulation of nitrate and phosphate in lower watersheds. Further, this finding supports Bandara et al ( 2010) who indicated higher nitrate, PH, and sulfate accumulation at the lower end of the Parana Halmillawa, Navodagama, Sandamal Eliya, Kahagollewa, and Puwarasankulama cascades in the dry zone.…”

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“…The findings, as displayed in Table 2, offer strong evidence about the appropriateness of the scale for further research. Bentler and Bonett (1980), Cheung and Rensvold (2002), and Su et al (2023) stated that composite reliability (CR) is a better way to measure internal consistency and reliability than Cronbach's alpha because it takes factor loadings for accuracy into account. A CR coefficient of at least 0.60 ensures construct validity (Fornell and Cha, 1994;Cohen, 2013), while CR scores above 0.70 indicate adequate model fit (Preacher and Hayes, 2004).…”

“…The Supplementary material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsufs. 2023…”