Food insecurity and youth suicidal behaviours: Evidence from the Canadian Health Survey of Children and Youth
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: Youth suicide, a major cause of death, is linked to poverty and other adverse experiences. Evidence of its association with food insecurity is unclear due to inadequate controls for household income in previous research. This cross-sectional study used independent reports of household income, food insecurity, and suicidal behaviours to examine these associations in a population-based sample. METHODS: The 2019 Canadian Health Survey on Children and Youth surveyed 6735 youth (15-17 years), gathering data on sadness/hopelessness, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts. Adults provided information on household food insecurity using a multi-item scale and about diagnosed mood disorders in youth. Household income data were provided by government tax records. We used Poisson regressions to estimate the relative risk (RR) of each suicidal behaviour attributed to household food insecurity, adjusting for household income and other covariates. RESULTS: Approximately one in five (19.8%) youth experienced marginal (5.2%), moderate (7.9%), or severe (3.3%) food insecurity. Moderate or severe food insecurity was associated with increased risks of sadness/hopelessness, mood disorder, suicide ideation, and suicide attempts (RRs 1.30-2.17) after controlling for household income differences and other covariates. Generally, more severe food insecurity was positively associated with suicide behaviours. CONCLUSION: Household food insecurity is associated with youth suicidal behaviours, independently of household income. Its underlying pathway to youth mental health includes social and psychological factors that require targeted policy intervention.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.009 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".