Rise in Mental Distress among Teens

Linked to Climate Change

Worsening human-induced climate change may have effects beyond the widely reported rising sea levels, higher temperatures, and impacts on food supply and migration and may also extend to influencing mental distress among high schoolers in the United States, according to Drexel study.

According to a representative survey of 38,616 high school students from 22 public school districts in 14 US states, the quarter of those adolescents who had experienced the highest number of days in a climate disaster within the past two years and the past five years such as hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, droughts, and wildfire-had 20 percent higher odds of developing mental distress than their peers who experienced few or no disaster events.

The paper is the first large-scale research looking at mental health of adolescents following multiple disaster events including the timing, frequency, and duration of the events-spanning 83 federally declared climate disasters occurring within 10 years before the survey was completed.

The findings, using May 2019 data on sadness/hopelessness and short sleep from the US Youth Risk Behaviour Survey and disaster data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, were published recently in the journal Preventive Medicine Reports.

"We know that climate change has and will have catastrophic impacts across the globe," said lead author Amy Auchincloss, PhD, an associate professor of epidemiology in the Dornsife School of Public Health.