Longitudinal tracking of 844 young people with diabetes reveals that chronic food insecurity creates measurable deterioration in mental health outcomes over six years. Among type 1 diabetics, both persistent and intermittent food access problems correlated with elevated depression, anxiety, and stress scores, with symptoms worsening progressively over time. Type 2 diabetics showed similar depression patterns but without the temporal progression seen in type 1 cases.
This research fills a critical gap in understanding how economic instability intersects with chronic disease management during the vulnerable transition from adolescence to adulthood. The findings suggest that food insecurity operates as more than just a nutrition barrier — it appears to function as a persistent stressor that compounds the already substantial psychological burden of diabetes self-management. The differential impact between diabetes types may reflect varying socioeconomic contexts or disease management complexity. For clinicians, these results underscore that addressing food access should be considered an integral component of diabetes care rather than a peripheral social issue. The temporal analysis particularly highlights how intermittent food insecurity — perhaps more common than absolute food scarcity — still produces measurable mental health consequences that accumulate over time.