Discussion
SECONDARY
The present study is the first RCT to analyze the causal effect of a food security intervention on perceived stress and perceived coping (component of overall mental health) in pregnant women from smallholder farming households in SSA. Our results show that pregnant women from the treatment households had higher perceived coping scores but experienced more perceived stress compared to pregnant women from the control households.The implementation of the hermetic storage bags in the treatment households might have been evaluated as an externally determined environmental stressor that was uncertain, uncontrollable and threatening (primary appraisal), thus triggering a stress response. According to the results of the PSS-4 subscale perceived stress, pregnant women from the treatment households felt less able to control important things in their life and felt that difficulties were piling up so high that they could not overcome them (items 1 and 4) [Although the implementation of the new technology may pose a perceived threat, the technology itself is a tangible resource (secondary appraisal) that can be used to counteract the effects of PHL and therefore food insecurity. According to the subscale perceived coping of the PSS-4 [Mental health in pregnant women is affected by the time of gestation. Recent evidence indicates that the longitudinal course of distress during pregnancy exhibits a U-shaped curve [It is noteworthy that the timing of data collection coincided with the COVID-19 outbreak and COVID-19 restrictions imposed by the Kenyan government, which began in mid-March 2020 and continued until early July 2020. Focus group discussions with farmers in this RCT indicated that these restrictions had a strong impact on their daily lives, as farmers were unable to access agricultural markets, which in turn affected their food security status (for detailed information, see Huss et al. [Some limitations need to be acknowledged when interpreting the findings reported in this study. First, the questionnaire was completed via self-report. However, as there was no personal interaction with the pregnant women, we do not expect a systematic response bias [