Investigating food insecurity and mental health in Uganda

Having previously worked as clinical nutritionist in Uganda, I first became interested in psychology during my master's degree at McGill University in Canada. This transformed into a specific fascination in the link between food insecurity and mental health following one of a series of global food security lectures. Food is the third most basic need of humanity, after air and water. I began my PhD to explore its effect on mental health outcomes in children and adolescents, given my background in food and nutritional sciences.

Food insecurity (an inconsistent access to affordable, safe and nutritious foods) and mental illness are ongoing public health challenges. About 2.33 billion people lacked access to nutritious, safe and sufficient food globally in 2023, and one out of every five people in Africa experienced hunger. Approximately 50% of all mental health conditions emerge before the age of 15 and 75% by the age of 18, and food insecurity which is a leading contributor to poor mental health will still be highly prevalent in Africa by 2030.

Working with Professor Hugo Melgar-Quninonez at McGill University, I used a data driven psychometric approach to construct a school food security measure for use in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). I collected ethnographic data from children who shared their experiences of food hardship, and how it affected them socially, emotionally and psychologically.

I began my PhD, titled “Food Insecurity and Mental Health among Children and Adolescents: Mixed Methods Study in Uganda”, on a King’s Africa International Postgraduate Research Scholarship at the IoPPN with Professor Crick Lund and Dr Tatiana Taylor Salisbury to unpack the mechanisms through which food insecurity could influence internalising mental health conditions (e.g. depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder) and externalising mental health conditions (e.g. conduct disorders and oppositional disorders), as well as how these mental health conditions could influence food insecurity, especially in children and adolescents in sub–Saharan Africa. Establishing these mechanisms will help inform the design and the development of interventions aimed at breaking the cycle of mental illness and food insecurity for sustainable development of sub-Saharan Africa.