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Chapter 4 - Developmental Perspectives on Understanding and Responding to Mental Health Impacts of Climate Change on Young People

from Part I - Conceptual Foundations of Climate Distress in Young People

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2024

By
Francis Vergunst  and
Helen L. Berry
Edited by
Elizabeth Haase  and
Kelsey Hudson
Elizabeth Haase
Affiliation:
University of Nevada, Reno
Kelsey Hudson
Affiliation:
Climate Psychology Alliance North America
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Summary

Climate change is already harming the health and well-being of children across the world. In this chapter, we emphasize the need to go beyond the focus on negative psychological responses to climate change and consider its much broader impacts on psychological health – including increasing rates of psychiatric disorders – that overwhelmingly have their origins early in life. This requires taking a developmental life course perspective. Viewed in this way, we show that climatic stressors can affect healthy development from conception onwards by operating with additive, interactive and cumulative developmental effects to increase mental health vulnerability across the life course. In the second part of the chapter, we discuss issues of measurement and emphasize the value of employing longitudinal and multimethod approaches. We conclude with a discussion of adaptation and response planning in the context of current global inequities.

Keywords

climate changedisastersmental healthchildrenlife coursedevelopmental psychopathologylongitudinalequity
Type
Chapter
Information
Climate Change and Youth Mental Health
Multidisciplinary Perspectives
 , pp. 70 - 92
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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