A new study lead-authored by Trinity professor Dr. Kristin Hadfield found that climate change is fuelling an adolescent mental health crisis in areas most climate-affected. Published on March 17th in the “Journal of Climate Change and Health”, the study focuses on adolescent mental health in Southern Madagascar, linking severe drought in the region to high rates of depression, anxiety, and hopelessness. It is one of the first studies to investigate the link between climate change and mental health in severely climate-affected places.
The study was conducted in March 2024 in Androy, Madagascar, one of the world’s most climate-affected regions. Since 2019, the population has experienced a severe drought. Most of the population are pastoralists and subsistence farmers. Recent drought, accompanied by devastating wind storms, has ravaged their crops of cassava, maize, and sweet potatoes and prevented any food security. In 2021, the people of Androy endured what experts are now saying is the first climate-change-induced famine. The population now suffers from recurrent famine events, known as the “Kere” in Malagasy, which literally translates to “starved to death”. In the south of Madagascar, up to 1.3 million people face acute food insecurity and almost 40% of children are chronically malnourished.
The study, led by researchers from Trinity’s School of Psychology, along with researchers from Catholic University of Madagascar, Queen Mary University of London, University College London, and CBM Global, demonstrates that climate effects are already damaging mental health. Dr Hadfield, Associate Professor in the School of Psychology and Trinity Centre for Global Health, explained, “we found that chronic climate stressors — not just extreme weather events — are already shaping adolescent mental health. In higher-income countries, climate anxiety often focuses on future risks, but in Madagascar, young people are already living the reality”.
The authors of the study link climate change to a mental health crisis in 83 Madagascan adolescents through mixed-methods surveying. They found that over 82.1% of the participants scored as having probable depression, while up to 86.8% scored as having probable generalized anxiety disorder. The researchers found three causes of this crisis: “loss of household resources, a state of uncertainty, and a disruption of coping mechanisms”.
In the first, food insecurity has crippled the region and intensified poverty. In the study, 90% of participants said their household had run out of food in the last year, and 69% said they had gone an entire day without eating. When asked about the effects of climate change, many participants instantly responded “Kere”: they had seen people in their community starve to death. As one girl said, “so many died […] there were many elders, but they died because of the malnutrition”.
The second causal link was characterised by uncertainty. For young people, they have little future as farmers in an increasingly drought-ridden, unstable region. Previously reliable weather patterns and storm cycles have been made meaningless. “There’s nothing that we can predict”, one boy said.
A third effect of climate change on adolescent mental health was the disruption of coping mechanisms, especially having fun and going to school. School is often closed during extreme climactic events – like the climate-change intensified sandstorms and cyclones battering the region – and increasing poverty from failed crops makes it difficult for families to pay school fees.
As researcher Dr. Nambinina Rasolomalala from the Catholic University of Madagascar summed it up, “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”.
The researchers called for four areas of potential intervention to address the growing mental health crisis. The first and most crucial would be improvements to food and water security, which would have a momentous, cascading effect on mental health. Secondly, they called for implementing climate adaptations for farming to address the powerlessness and hopelessness experienced by Madagascan youth. Other areas of intervention would be improving access to school, and increasing access to coping resources like music, dancing, and art.
Though the study has a relatively small sample size and a hyper-specific regional focus, it sets an important precedent for how worsening climate effects will harm mental health. As Dr Hadfield explained, “young individuals in southern Madagascar are the unwilling pioneers of the impact of climate change. They can provide important insights into the way climate changes impact on adolescent mental health.”
