Climate change is affecting the environments in which we live more and more every year. Along with that, these drastic changes are starting to take a toll on our mental health, as well, especially for young adults.
An international research team has taken an interest in what kind of effects climate change is having on adolescent mental health, and the results they have uncovered are concerning.
A Mental Health Crisis
In a study published in the Journal of Climate Change and Health, researchers assert that climate change is a mental health crisis. They are particularly concerned with how it is affecting adolescent well-being in the areas most severely experiencing climate crises in the present.
One of those areas is Madagascar, where the research for this study took place. The team collected survey data from 83 adolescents and also ran focus groups with 48 participants from six different rural villages.
The most common response across all the data was that young people suffered from extremely high levels of anxiety, depression, and worry about the current and future impacts of climate change. An overwhelming number of respondents described themselves as feeling hopeless about their future, with one participant going as far as saying that “life is a misery.”
“This research makes it clear that climate change is not just an environmental issue – it is a mental health issue as well,” said Kristin Hadfield, associate professor in the School of Psychology and Trinity Centre for Global Health at Trinity College Dublin, in a press release. “We found that chronic climate stressors – not just extreme weather events – are already shaping adolescent mental health.”
Read More: Disturbing New Details Emerge About the State of the Global Climate
Chronic Climate Stressors
Hadfield and her team identified three main ways that climate change affected adolescent mental health. The first is a disruption of coping mechanisms. The second is the loss of household resources, with many respondents expressing deep distress over their families’ struggles.
The third way climate change affects mental health is through uncertainty about the future. Food insecurity is a particularly strong factor in all of these areas, and the data collected on this issue is sobering.
Of those young people who participated in the survey, 90 percent said that their households had run out of food in the past year. Another 69 percent admitted that they had gone at least an entire day without food. Even more concerning is the fact that some adolescents witnessed people in their community starve to death.
Madagascar as Ground Zero
Climate change is to blame for the scarcity of food and resources in Madagascar, which is causing a mental health crisis among adolescents.
Madagascar is an island nation located in the Indian Ocean and is one of the least developed countries in the world. The majority of the population is dependent on subsistence farming for their livelihoods, both personal and economic.
Southern Madagascar is one of the areas most severely affected by climate change in the world. It experienced its first climate-change-induced famine in 2021.
From water scarcity to heat waves to flooding, the effects of climate change for the Madagascan farming communities are extreme and are causing unprecedented levels of climate-related stress in children and young adults.
“Adolescents in Androy, Southern Madagascar, speak of famine, fear, and futures stolen by drought and sandstorms. With crops failing and water scarce, many adolescents are forced to leave their communities to survive, while those who stay face hunger, lost education, and deep despair,” said Nambinina Rasolomalala from the Catholic University of Madagascar in a press release.
The team hopes their study will shed light on the growing concern and connection between climate change and mental health and will increase future research in low- and middle-income countries.
Read More: The Domino Effects of a Global Food Shortage
Article Sources
Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:
Journal of Climate Change and Health. “There is no hope; only strong wind”: How climate change impacts adolescent mental health in southern Madagascar
As the marketing coordinator at Discover Magazine, Stephanie Edwards interacts with readers across Discover's social media channels and writes digital content. Offline, she is a contract lecturer in English & Cultural Studies at Lakehead University, teaching courses on everything from professional communication to Taylor Swift, and received her graduate degrees in the same department from McMaster University. You can find more of her science writing in Lab Manager and her short fiction in anthologies and literary magazine across the horror genre.
