Sharing – Food Insecurity Linked to Rapid, Reversible Mental Health Deterioration
Sometimes, solutions to mental health issues aren’t that difficult to find:
Food insecurity predicted and was associated with increased symptoms of anxiety and depression within 1 month, new research showed. However, mental health improved rapidly when food security was restored.
I’m not saying that creating a program that eliminates food insecurity is easy, especially in today’s political climate. What I am saying, though, is that this isn’t a deeply mysterious problem, either. I’ve been someone who didn’t know if I would be able to afford to eat, or where I was going to sleep. I’ve often argued that mental health and homelessness coexist. We tend to think about someone having mental health problems winding up homeless, but we discount how homelessness causes mental health problems. I spent a short time in my early adult life homeless. My mental health issues were part of the reason I was living on the street. They got significantly worse during that time because everything about the experience makes them worse.
Doing what we can to lift people out of poverty, homelessness, food insecurity, etc., is mental healthcare.
