A girl stands on sandbags stacked to guard towards flooding in Barisal, Bangladesh. Credit score: Liza Goldberg
A brand new Stanford-led examine sheds mild on “an emerging psychological health crisis” that disproportionately impacts ladies. Printed July 30 in The Lancet Planetary Well being, the examine is among the many first to quantify how repeated local weather stressors impression the psychological well-being and future outlook of adolescents in low-resource settings.
Researchers from Stanford’s faculties of Drugs, Legislation, and Sustainability partnered with well being specialists in Bangladesh to survey greater than 1,000 youngsters and conduct focus teams throughout two areas with starkly completely different flood publicity.
“What we found really lifts the voices of frontline adolescents—a group whose perspectives and health outcomes are so rarely investigated and communicated,” mentioned lead creator Liza Goldberg, an incoming Earth system science Ph.D. scholar within the Stanford Doerr College of Sustainability.
Teenagers in flood-prone Barisal, Bangladesh, have been almost twice as more likely to present indicators of tension and greater than 3 times as more likely to expertise depressive signs in comparison with friends in comparatively extra flood-safe Dhaka, the nation’s capital metropolis. Women have been almost twice as more likely to present indicators of tension, typically pushed by fear over potential family stress and home violence that may end result from pure disasters.
“Fears around climate change may be a central contributor to everyday well-being,” mentioned Goldberg, a 2024 graduate of Stanford’s Earth Techniques Program. “We were shocked by the rates of climate distress we observed, particularly the feeling that environmental changes are derailing young people’s sense of purpose and possibility.”
The examine’s qualitative findings paint a vivid image of how excessive climate impacts younger individuals’s psychological state and life selections. In Barisal, adolescents described how monetary pressure from frequent flooding has compelled households to desert desires of upper schooling and steady work, changing them with fatalism, family battle, early marriage, and deep emotional pressure.
“The perspectives of these adolescents, especially the girls, who live in some of the world’s most climate-affected communities demonstrate the human price of climate change, and underscore the importance of addressing it,” mentioned examine co-author Stephen Luby, the Lucy Becker Professor of Drugs within the Stanford College of Drugs.
Throughout the examine inhabitants, signs of tension have been strongly linked to what researchers name “temporal discounting”—an inclination to keep away from long-term planning in favor of short-term selections. When households are centered solely on getting by way of the day, they might make minor annual changes, like elevating a house by just a few inches, as an alternative of creating extra important investments—like transferring away from a river or utilizing flood-resistant constructing supplies—that might guarantee their long-term security and resilience.
“This study marks a critical turning point in recognizing the mental health crisis silently unfolding among climate-vulnerable adolescents,” mentioned examine co-author Farjana Jahan, an affiliate scientist on the Worldwide Heart for Diarrheal Illness Analysis, Bangladesh. “It brings evidence to what communities have long felt but could not quantify—that the climate crisis is also a psychological one.”
The researchers name for funding in community-driven psychological well being interventions—significantly these tailor-made to adolescents and knowledgeable by their lived expertise, in addition to gender-sensitive local weather resilience interventions, resembling applications that defend ladies’ academic and financial alternatives throughout and after local weather disasters.
“This is about more than mental health,” mentioned examine co-author Gabrielle Wong-Parodi, an affiliate professor of Earth system science on the Stanford Doerr College of Sustainability and a senior fellow on the Stanford Woods Institute for the Setting. “Our findings suggest that cognitive overload and despair are making it harder for vulnerable communities to adapt to climate change. If young people can’t plan for their future, the entire community’s resilience is at risk.”
Extra info:
Liza Goldberg et al, Adolescent psychological well being, temporal discounting, and local weather misery beneath elevated flood publicity in Bangladesh: a mixed-methods cross-sectional examine, The Lancet Planetary Well being (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.lanplh.2025.05.003
Offered by
Stanford College
Quotation:
The hidden psychological well being price of local weather misery (2025, August 1)
retrieved 2 August 2025
from https://medicalxpress.com/information/2025-08-hidden-mental-health-climate-distress.html
This doc is topic to copyright. Aside from any truthful dealing for the aim of personal examine or analysis, no
half could also be reproduced with out the written permission. The content material is offered for info functions solely.
