Climate Change and Children’s Mental Health: A Developmental Perspective

Abstract

Climate change is a major global public-health challenge that will have wide-ranging impacts on human psychological health and well-being. Children and adolescents are at particular risk because of their rapidly developing brain, vulnerability to disease, and limited capacity to avoid or adapt to threats and impacts. They are also more likely to worry about climate change than any other age group. Drawing on a developmental life-course perspective, we show that climate-change-related threats can additively, interactively, and cumulatively increase psychopathology risk from conception onward; that these effects are already occurring; and that they constitute an important threat to healthy human development worldwide. We then argue that monitoring, measuring, and mitigating these risks is a matter of social justice and a crucial long-term investment in developmental and mental health sciences. We conclude with a discussion of conceptual and measurement challenges and outline research priorities going forward.

On climate anxiety and the threat it may pose to daily life functioning and adaptation: a study among European and African French-speaking participants

“…There is mounting evidence that adolescents and young adults are increasingly worried about and functionally burdened by climate change because of their perception that their future is doomed and their feelings of betrayal and abandonment by adults and governments that are failing to react appropriately (Hickman et al 2021 ). As pointed out by several mental health experts (e.g., Crandon et al 2022 ; Vergunst and Berry 2021 ), increasing their empowerment as a key stakeholder group, representative of the world’s future adults, may help lessen the burden of climate change in this group. Encouraging school-based programs to build agency and facilitating family and community support may also help foster climate change resilience in youths (Crandon et al 2022 ).…”

Psychological responses, mental health, and sense of agency for the dual challenges of climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic in young people in the UK: an online survey study

“…Developmental life-course perspectives on climate impacts in particular will benefit from an integrative and interdisciplinary framework to identify causal pathways, and to monitor and mitigate age-specific risks. 55 …”

On climate anxiety and the threat it may pose to daily life functioning and adaptation: A study among European and African French-speaking participants

“…Actionable efforts are thus urgently required. As pointed by several mental health experts (e.g., Baker et al, 2021;Vergunst & Berry, 2021), increasing their empowerment as a key stakeholder group, representative of the world's future adults, may help lessen the burden of climate change in this group. Improving school-based (i.e., from primary-school to universitylevel education) psychoeducation programs about climate change-related mental-health risks, alongside solution-focused coping and family and community support, may also help foster climate change-related mental-health resilience in youths (Baker et al, 2021; for a discussion, see Vergunst & Berry, 2021).…”