Aperçu

Résumé (français)

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Résumé (anglais)

Gender and food insecurity are important social determinants of health and are related to a wide spectrum of mental health conditions. Food insecurity typically contains four dimensions: qualitative, quantitative, social and psychological; each of which has its own unique stressors. Food insecurity is a chronically stressful experience, and chronic stress has been consistently associated with the development of mental health problems. This thesis examines, using a pooled sample from a national data set, how the sex gap in seven mental health outcomes is affected by consideration of food insecurity status. For the full sample, the sex gap in five of seven mental health outcomes was pronounced. When only the food insecure sub-sample was examined, there were no statistically significant sex differences in six of seven mental health outcomes. Therefore, food insecurity has a sex neutralizing effect on the sex gap in mental health outcomes, an indication of its powerful effect as a stressor.