The negative relationship between hunger and adolescent mental health is uncontroversial and universally present

Hunger has established detrimental impacts on physical health, with emerging evidence indicating negative impacts on mental health. However, there is a pronounced knowledge gap outside high- income settings and for adolescents. Previous research also provides differing estimates of hunger’s impacts, potentially underpinned by a wide range of researcher degrees of freedom. We investigated the relationship between hunger and mental health in the Global School-based Student Health Survey with a sample of 410,213 adolescents from 79 countries. We used a principled multiverse analysis, systematically exploring 15,360 model specifications. Our results show a consistently stable negative relationship between hunger and adolescent mental health (worrying, median beta = .12; suicidality, median beta = .07). We find evidence of a dose-response relationship, such that more frequently experiencing hunger is associated with greater reported levels of worrying and suicidality. Overall, we provide robust evidence of the significant negative relationship between hunger and adolescent mental ill health.