Hunger and Mental Health: What the Data from Mexico Shows

We don’t usually talk about food insecurity and suicide in the same conversation. They belong to different fields, one to nutrition and economics, the other to psychiatry. Put them together and you get something more specific than either gives you alone: a mental health problem with material causes. In Mexico, not being able to afford enough nutritious food doesn’t only affect physical health. It affects mental health too.

Survey data shows that more than 25% of adults in Mexico eat less than they should because there isn’t enough food in the household. Over 21% go hungry because they can’t afford to eat. That’s millions of people, and what follows from it isn’t only nutritional. There’s a growing body of evidence linking food insecurity to depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation (Jones, 2017).

Some of this is direct. Poor diets affect cognition, sleep, and mood. The rest is social. In many households in Latin America men are expected to provide, and when food runs short that expectation turns into a kind of pressure that doesn’t let up. We treat suicide as an individual matter. It’s also a social one, tied to poverty, stigma, and what’s in the kitchen.

In Mexico suicide is still taboo. That makes it hard to talk about and harder to study. Data from the World Health Organization’s Study on Global Aging and Adult Health (SAGE) gives us a rare view of it. Of more than 2,500 people surveyed, only 318 answered the questions about suicide. Among those who did, around 33% reported having thought about suicide and 7% reported an attempt.

What the Data Shows

The more food insecurity people reported, the worse their mental health outcomes. Respondents who ate less because there wasn’t enough food were significantly more likely to show signs of depression and anxiety. After controlling for age, gender, and education, one association held: going hungry on a regular basis was tied to increased suicidal ideation.

The study also asked whether people could get fruits and vegetables. It’s an indirect measure but a useful one, because it tells you something about food quality and not only food quantity. Respondents who couldn’t reliably get nutritious food had worse mental health outcomes. What people eat matters, not just whether they eat.

Not Only a Mexico Problem

It’s easy to treat hunger as something that happens elsewhere. Food insecurity is rising in high-income countries too. In the United States 14% of households were food insecure in 2013, and nothing about the pandemic improved that. Close to 815 million people are undernourished worldwide (FAO et al., 2017).

Let’s be clear about what this data can’t do. It’s self-reported, and in a context where suicide isn’t discussed openly, some people will have chosen not to answer. Only 318 out of 2,500 responded to those questions at all. That non-response is the taboo showing up inside the dataset, and it means the 33% and the 7% almost certainly describe the people who were willing to talk rather than the population. The study also leaves out income and employment status, which is a real gap, because “couldn’t afford food” covers a lot of very different household situations.

So the numbers are soft. The direction isn’t, and it’s the same direction reported across other countries.

What follows from this? More research, but that’s the easy answer. The harder one is that consistent access to nutritious food is a mental health measure and should be funded like one, and that clinicians should be asking about food access instead of assuming it. Stigma sits on both sides of this, hunger and suicide, and it keeps people quiet. That silence is part of why the problem stays hard to measure in the first place.

If you or someone you know is struggling, support is available. In Mexico, the Línea de la Vida can be reached at 800 911 2000. In the United States, call or text 988.

References

Burris, M., Kihlstrom, L., Serrano Arce, K., Prendergast, K., Dobbins, J., McGrath, E., Renda, A., Shannon, E., Cordier, T., Song, Y., Himmelgreen, D., 2021. Food insecurity, loneliness, and social support among older adults. J. Hunger Environ. Nutr. 16 (1), 29–44. https://doi.org/10.1080/19320248.2019.1595253

Jacob, L., Stubbs, B., Firth, J., Smith, L., Haro, J.M., Koyanagi, A., 2020. Fast food consumption and suicide attempts among adolescents aged 12 to 15 years from 32 countries. J. Affect. Disord. 266, 63–70. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2020.01.130

Jones, A.D., 2017. Food insecurity and mental health status: a global analysis of 149 countries. Am. J. Prev. Med. 53 (2), 264–273. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2017.04.008

Miller, M., Hemenway, D., 2008. Guns and suicide in the United States. N. Engl. J. Med. 359, 989–991. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMp0805923

FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP, WHO, 2017. The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2017. Building Resilience for Peace and Food Security. FAO, Rome.

World Health Organization, 2021. Suicide. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/suicide