Recipient organisationNIHR Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre
NIHR supportRecorded as supported by this research centre
PeriodMar 2025 — Ongoing
In plain English
AI plain-English summary
A 2021 study of 10,000 young people found that 84% are worried about the climate crisis, and 45% say those concerns disrupt their daily lives. This project addresses a gap: there are no evidence-based interventions for climate anxiety in young people. Climate anxiety is a rational response to real threats and inadequate political action, but it can worsen existing mental health difficulties. The researchers want to understand what factors help young people maintain resilience and a sense of agency—the feeling they can contribute effectively—rather than being overwhelmed by loss, threat, and injustice. The team will develop and test a mindfulness intervention co-designed with young people. It combines practices for processing climate-related grief, building supportive communities, and balancing meaningful action with self-care. If successful, this could give clinicians and youth workers a practical, evidence-based tool to support mental health and civic engagement. The impact would be on how young people cope with a global crisis they did not create but must live with—not on infrastructure or systems, but on everyday psychological wellbeing and the capacity to act without despair.
View original technical description
Key objectives: (1) Elucidate key factors that might influence young people’s mental health, resilience, and experience of agency in response to the climate crisis as well as their experienced capacity to contribute effectively to addressing the climate crisis. (2) Develop and test a co-participatory designed mindfulness intervention adapted to youth with climate anxiety in terms of feasibility and ability to promote wellbeing, flourishing, resilience, self-efficacy, agency and civic engagement related to the climate crisis. Background: Climate change and mental health are two of the most significant and pressing challenges facing societies across the world, with the greatest impact on the most vulnerable and the youngest. A 2021 Lancet study of 10,000 young people around the world found that 84% were worreid about the climate crisis, and 45% reported that these concerns negatively affected their daily lives. Climate anxiety is widely considered a rational response to the climate crisis and inadequate political action, but it can exacerbate existing mental health difficulties. The mental health impact of climate change includes the psychological burdens that arise with increasing awareness of the loss, threat and injustice caused by these crises, and lack of agency and power to address these or feeling heard by those in power. The ability to find a voice and sense of agency; build supportive communities, balance meaningful action with self-care practices, and process difficult emotions related to the climate crisis may be central to promote greater mental health and flourishing for young people with climate anxiety. While there is currently a lack of evidence-based interventions, several sources recommend mindfulness training to help i) process climate-related anxiety and grief and ii) support perspective taking and self-care practices, and iii) connection to the environment, combined with practices to support community building, agency and civic engagement.
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