Impact of food insecurity with hunger on mental distress among community-dwelling older adults

Razak M Gyasi, Bernard Obeng and Joseph Y Yeboah

PLOS ONE, 2020, vol. 15, issue 3, 1-11

Abstract: Background: Hunger frequently and persistently occur in older populations in low-income countries especially in sub-Sahara Africa. The aim of this study was to examine the associations between food insecurity with hunger and psychological distress among older people in Ghana. Methods: A total of 1200 individuals aged ≥50 years were recruited during 2016/2017 Ageing, Health, Psychological Well-being and Health-seeking Behavior Study. Associations between psychological distress (assessed with the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale) and hunger (assessed with a 30-day subjective scale) were evaluated using linear regression modeling. Results: The overall prevalence of food insecurity was 36% with approximately 27% and 9% respectively for moderate and severe levels of hunger whilst the mean score of psychological distress was 9.5 (±4.10). Persons experiencing moderate hunger (β = 0.71, SE = 0.160, p

Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0229840 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 29840&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0229840

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0229840

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().