Climate worry and daily life impacts among a sample of Canadian youth accessing integrated youth services

Despite calls for service providers to support youth in navigating the mental health impacts of climate change, data from clinical contexts remain limited. Our research explores climate worry among youth accessing integrated youth services (IYS) in British Columbia, Canada. Youth aged 16-24 years (n=393) were recruited from the waiting rooms of four IYS centres. Participants completed a survey to capture sociodemographic characteristics and assess mental health, including single items on level of climate change worry and whether feelings about climate change negatively impacted their daily lives. Overall, 40.9% of participants were very or extremely worried about climate change and 28.0% of participants reported that their feelings about climate change resulted in negative impacts on their daily life. Gender diverse youth and older youth were more likely to report negative daily life impacts due to their feelings about climate change. Moreover, while climate worry was inconsistently associated with measures of mental health, reporting that climate change was negatively impacting daily life was associated with higher scores of depressive symptoms, psychological distress, and worsened functioning across multiple domains. This study is among the first to examine the relationship between climate change and youth mental health in a clinical sample. From these results, it is clear that a substantial subset of youth accessing clinical services are identifying that their feelings about climate change are negatively impacting their daily lives. Based on these results, service providers should be attuned to the impacts of climate change on youth mental health.