In Focus: Climate Change and Youth Mental Health

In Focus: Climate Change and Youth Mental Health

By Katherine Crowe, PhD
HARBOR

Climate Change and Mental Health: How Are They Related?

In our present-day world, news reports detail devastation wrought by hurricanes, wildfires, and heatwaves with increasing regularity. These disasters take their toll in countless ways, including on human mental health. Anxiety, grief, anger, and confusion are all already common emotional experiences following extreme weather events (Charlson et al., 2021). Now, we must contend with a future in which the frequency and intensity of such events increase, coupled with anticipation of longer-term changes to our environments that threaten our communities, livelihoods, and lives.

Researchers have begun to document that (1) climate change impacts mental health and (2) this is prevalent, particularly among youth. Young people’s attitudes and emotions about climate change were examined in a recent global survey (Hickman et al., 2021). Results highlighted the anger and fear youth ages 16-25 experience about the planet’s future, feelings of powerlessness in the face of climate inaction, and a disrupted sense of connectedness to people, places, and traditions. By way of illustration, three-quarters of respondents reported they think the future is frightening, over half believe their family’s security will be threatened by climate change, and almost 40% are hesitant to have children.

Climate stressors—whether discrete events like flood, or long-term changes like rising sea levels—can impact mental health across multiple dimensions (Bourque & Willox, 2014; Cianconi, Betrò, & Janiri, 2020; Clayton, 2015). The degree to which a person directly experiences the stressor varies. The individual’s own home may be flooded, for instance, but a stressor can still carry great weight if it is experienced vicariously or if one anticipates its future impact. Mental health outcomes can also be time-limited or chronic and range in level of clinical severity. Finally, the causal pathways from stressor to outcome can be direct or indirect. Post-traumatic stress due to the physical danger posed by a flash flood is possible, as are scenarios in which flooding forces a temporary relocation, and the associated loss of community support leads to depression.

Who Is Affected by Climate Threats?

Critically, while everyone will be affected by climate change, not all will be affected equally, with disproportionate vulnerability related to individual, geographic, and socioeconomic factors. People already oppressed by systemic inequity—including those who are female, non-White, lower-income, unhoused, elderly, or who have pre-existing mental or physical health conditions—may have more limited physical and financial resources, health and community supports, and social capital. In the case of climate change, they are more likely to be in harm’s way and more challenged to recover in its wake (Hrabok, Delorme, & Agyapong, 2020).

Children are another at-risk group. Their vulnerability to climate change is multidimensional (for review: Clayton, Manning, Speiser, & Hill, 2021). Physically, because of their biological immaturity, children are more susceptible to diseases, malnutrition, and physical stress, which are more prevalent in a climate-impacted world. Socially, youth are vulnerable given their dependence on systems of care, such as schools, which are often disrupted following climatic events. Psychologically, youth are dependent on consistent adult caregivers for their emotional wellbeing and struggle more with uncertainty that is inherent to climate disruption.

The Clinical Significance (or not) of Climate Distress

Climate distress is real and noteworthy, but is it a cause for clinical concern? There is no categorical answer to this. Distress should never be pathologized without taking into context a young person’s idiosyncratic circumstances (Clayton, 2020). In evaluating climate distress, consider variables such as:

• The extent to which they or their loved ones are at unique risk for harm;
• The extent to which their attitudes, behaviors, and decisions differ greatly from similarly aligned peers; and
• The extent to which climate concerns interfere with valued or necessary activities

A more thorough clinical evaluation may be warranted if climate concerns are causing significant impairment in important areas of functioning, prompting behaviors that notably diverge from peers with whom the child shares similar attitudes, preventing joy in activities, or impeding work toward goals.

Clinicians may also find climate concerns present as part of another, established psychiatric presentation. Conditions such as generalized anxiety disorder, major depression, and obsessive-compulsive disorder often ‘recruit in’ climate concerns to their existing symptom universes. For instance, a teenager with depression may find that climate change is one more reason for him to feel angry and amotivated: “I’m not going to get into college or get a job. The world is ending anyway, so there’s no point in trying.” An elementary schooler with OCD may worry she’s a bad person if she doesn’t adhere to the sustainability practices she’s learned, and thus she compulsively checks that there is nothing wasted in her family’s household.

How to Support Youth in Coping with Climate Emotions

Adult caregivers, friends, teachers, and clinicians can play a central role in supporting youth with climate distress. It is important to make oneself a trusted, approachable source for youth who have questions. It may be helpful to start by examining and addressing one’s own possible avoidance of climate change—for many of us, it is a frightening and uncomfortable subject that we might try to distract from because it feels intimidating. Nonetheless, we should familiarize ourselves with the facts of climate change to facilitate honest, accurate conversations.

Adults should also take seriously the concerns voiced by youth about climate change. They should avoid dismissing or minimizing worries, and instead listen and provide validation. From there, one might consider whether and how to provide more information, guided by the child’s developmental stage. While older children and adolescents might be able to take part in nuanced climate discussions, even young children can engage with climate concepts, for instance, through experiential activities that help them understand the ecosystems in their own neighborhoods and communities.

Adults can also point children toward actions big and small, reinforcing that they have the capacity to help the environment, and in doing so, also support their own sense of competence, autonomy, and connectedness with their changing world. While some children may innately be interested in taking action, others may cope differently. Though no one “right” way exists in coping with climate distress, one’s coping style in the face of climate-triggered emotions is arguably more important than the emotions themselves in influencing how successfully one is ultimately able to move forward with their distress (Ojala, 2012). Coping that makes meaning from profound, existentially difficult problems tends to support better mental health outcomes than coping that relies purely on problem-solving or on distraction.

Finally, clinicians specifically can improve their own competence in this area by familiarizing themselves with how climate concerns may typically present in their populations, consulting with other colleagues, and engaging in ongoing training about the confluence of mental health and climate change.

Resources

Learning about climate change

• ecoAmerica
• The Climate Reality Project

Talking with young people

• Talk Climate
• New York Times

Climate change and clinical psychology

• Climate Psychology Alliance of North America
• Climate Psychiatry Alliance

References

Bourque, F., & Willox, A. (2014). Climate change: the next challenge for public mental health? International Review of Psychiatry, 26(4), 415- 422. https://doi.org/10.3109/09540261.2014.925851 

Charlson, F., Ali, S., Benmarhnia, T., Pearl, M., Massazza, A., Augustinavicius, J., & Scott, J. G. (2021). Climate change and mental health: A scoping review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(9), 4486. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18094486

Cianconi, P., Betrò, S., & Janiri, L. (2020). The impact of climate change on mental health: A systematic descriptive review. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 11, 74. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2020.00074

Clayton, S. (2020). Climate anxiety: Psychological responses to climate change. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 74, 102263. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2020.102263

Clayton, S. (2015, September 20). Mental health and climate change [Presentation slides]. Climate Health Summit. https://slideplayer.com/slide/7795344/

Clayton, S., Manning, C. M., Speiser, M., & Hill, A. N. (2021). Mental health and our changing climate: Impacts, inequities, responses. American Psychological Association, and ecoAmerica.  https://doi.org/10.1037/e503122017-001 

Hickman, C., Marks, E., Pihkala, P., Clayton, S., Lewandowski, R. E., Mayall, E. E., … & van Susteren, L. (2021). Climate anxiety in children and young people and their beliefs about government responses to climate change: A global survey. The Lancet Planetary Health, 5(12), e863-e873.  https://doi.org/10.1016/s2542-5196(21)00278-3 

Hrabok, M., Delorme, A., & Agyapong, V. I. (2020). Threats to mental health and well-being associated with climate change. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 76, 102295. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2020.102295 

Ojala, M. (2012). How do children cope with global climate change? Coping strategies, engagement, and well-being. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 32(3), 225-233.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2012.02.004