A new paper investigating how mental health is related to global food security and nutrition has been published in Frontiers in Public Health, supported by the Mental Health Working Group.
Key messages:
• Both malnutrition and poor mental health constitute significant public health burdens globally.
• Each field has undergone conceptual and practical transformations, especially in relation to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
• The relationship between mental health and food security and nutrition (FSN) has been increasingly investigated, although usually ad hoc, with significant limitations from heterogeneous methods, populations, and sub-types of mental health and FSN.
• Global progress toward health goals will be sooner realized by working toward an empirical framework for hypothesis testing that incorporates common determinants and synergistic dynamics of mental health and FSN.
