The impact of drought on the association between food security and mental health in a nationally representative Australian sample

Table 5 Levels of food insecurity by type of drought exposure, stratified by urban and rural location, adjusted for confounding variables

	Food insecurity
	Missing meals			Below-average consumption core food			Above-average consumption discretionary food
	Mean % (SE)	Mean difference (SE)¹	P-value	Mean % (SE)	Mean difference (SE)¹	P-value	Mean % (SE)	Mean difference (SE)¹	P-value
Drought exposure (Rural)
Zero or Moderate	1.6 (0.01)	-0.1 (1.5)	0.934	33.2 (0.02)	-10.7 (7.5)	0.154	58.6 (0.03)	-0.5 (5.8)	0.927
Very Dry	n.a²	n.a²	n.a²	26.1 (0.03)	-17.8 (7.8)	0.024	70.4 (0.05)	11.3 (7.3)	0.121
Long Dry	2.3 (0.01)	0.6 (1.9)	0.744	31.0 (0.03)	-12.9 (7.6)	0.090	62.5 (0.04)	3.4 (6.4)	0.595
Constant Dry	3.9 (0.03)	2.2 (3.3)	0.511	27.5 (0.08)	-16.4 (10.1)	0.106	64.1 (0.07)	5.0 (8.9)	0.577
Constant and Long Dry	1.7 (0.02)	-	-	43.9 (0.07)	-	-	59.1 (0.05)	-	-
Drought exposure (Urban)
Zero or Moderate	1.9 (0.01)	1.2 (0.8)	0.133	33.4 (0.02)	-0.8 (4.5)	0.857	64.7 (0.01)	4.3 (4.7)	0.366
Very Dry	0.9 (0.01)	0.1 (0.7)	0.925	29.4 (0.02)	-4.8 (4.7)	0.307	62.7 (0.03)	2.3 (5.4)	0.673
Long Dry	1.3 (0.00)	0.5 (0.7)	0.510	28.4 (0.02)	-5.8 (4.5)	0.191	59.4 (0.02)	-1.1 (4.8)	0.827
Constant Dry	4.7 (0.02)	3.9 (2.1)	0.062	41.5 (0.05)	7.3 (6.6)	0.272	56.5 (0.03)	-4.0 (5.3)	0.455
Constant and Long Dry	0.8 (0.01)	-	-	34.3 (0.04)	-	-	60.4 (0.05)	-	-

¹The mean score difference measures the difference in the estimated mean psychological distress score between ‘constant and long dry’ and each other drought category.
²The ‘very dry’ drought category is dropped in the regression of missing meals because this variable perfectly predict the failure (missing meals =0), causing this variable’s coefficient to be unidentified.

ISSN: 1471-2458