Climate change taking toll on teen mental health, study finds

More than a third of Canadian teens say climate change is impacting their mental health, according to a national study led by Athabasca University researchers.

A survey of 800 Canadian youth aged 13 to 18 found that 37% reported their mental health was impacting their mental health to some extent. Teens indicated climate change has led to feelings of anxiety, stress, and worry, and fuels concerns and uncertainty for the future.

“We’re seeing a lot of increased attention around how young people are feeling around climate change. A lot of that is around their mental health and terms like climate anxiety, or eco anxiety,” explained study co-author Dr. Gina Martin, an associate professor in AU’s Faculty of Health Disciplines.

“We wanted to be able to better understand, from young people’s own perspectives and using their own language, how they feel that climate change is impacting their mental health.”

Climate anxiety, fear, and concerns for the future

The study, led by AU postdoctoral researcher Dr. Ishwar Tiwari, used a polling firm to engage youth from coast to coast to coast. After answering the initial question about whether climate change affects their mental health, participants were then asked a series of questions to understand specific concerns.

Researchers were able to identify four main themes, including how climate change affects participants’ emotionally and psychologically with responses related to anxiety, stress, worry, depression, sadness and fear. Other themes focused on teens’ concerns for their own futures, worries for the future of the environment, humanity, and wildlife, but also how climate change affects their ability to lead normal lives.

Concerns about their own future included feelings of hopelessness, worries about the potential loss of homes and livelihoods due to climate change and extreme weather events. Some even reported concerns about becoming a parent and raising children in a world that “will keep getting worse for them,” as one youth wrote.

For some youth, climate change is already having an impact on their ability to function with reports of difficulties sleeping at night and issues related to breathing, headaches, and weakness experienced during wildfire season when air quality is poor due to smoke.

Martin said the research team did not ask youth specifically about their physical health, but teens reported those impacts on their own. “That shows us that they're making that connection themselves about the fact that their physical health is being impacted.”

Engaging youth from coast to coast to coast

Martin said it was important for the study to engage teens directly to understand their perspectives. The study included youth from rural, remote, and urban communities to reflect a diversity of experiences and views across Canada. It was also important to include younger teens in the sample as most research on this topic often focuses on youth between the ages of 18 and 25.

“People are going to have different direct experiences depending on where they live, but also the way that they are perceiving things and their daily life are going to be impacted by whether they're in an urban or rural community, whether they're younger or older.”

The study results give researchers, policymakers, educators, and health professionals important data to develop tools and supports to help youth understand and navigate their feelings and develop resilience, Martin added.

“We want to make sure we're protecting young people’s mental health in the context of a changing climate, so that we’re able to say, ‘OK, these things are happening, but there’s mitigation strategies that are being put in place to protect mental health.”

The study was published in September in PLOS Mental Health.