According to a recent study, adolescents who are living in households with a limited or uncertain amount of nutritious foods are more likely to have emotional and mental and conduct problems.

"These findings add to our growing understanding of food insecurity and its implications, and demonstrate that food insecurity is an independent risk factor for mental health problems among adolescents," said lead author Dr. Elizabeth Poole-Di Salvo of Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York, according to Yahoo News.

 "According to the most recent data, food insecurity affects nearly 20 percent of U.S. households with children under the age of 18 years," Poole-Di Salvo told Reuters Health by email.

The researchers used data from a study of about 8,600 kids from ages 12 to 16 years, which was conducted in 2007. In most cases, one of the parents, usually the teenager's mother was interviewed on the phone.

The parents were asked questions about their economically - based  difficulties in meeting food needs over the past year,  and also asked to complete a 25 - item measure of their child's emotional symptoms, hyperactivity, conduct problems, social fit and peer problems.

Having access to free or reduced-price school lunch programs did not change these results, the researchers note.

"While we cannot infer causality from this study, we suspect that exposure to food insecurity during adolescence, a period of rapid brain growth and development, may lead to suboptimal nutrition as well as increased psychological stress for the family and adolescent, and may adversely impact adolescent mental health," Poole-Di Salvo said.

Teens dealing with food insecurity may be experiencing stress from the uncertainty of not knowing where their next meal is coming from, from being hungry or from deficiencies in specific nutrients, added senior study author Dr. Ruth E. K. Stein of Albert Einstein College of Medicine and The Children's Hospital at Montefiore in Bronx, New York.

"We cannot definitively rule out that mental health problems also cause household food insecurity, but that seems less likely, especially since we controlled for stressful life events and maternal mental health," Stein told Reuters Health by email.

"Early identification of risk factors for both food insecurity and mental health problems are critical, and pediatricians can be instrumental in connecting families to available resources in their communities," Poole-Di Salvo said.