The Climate Cares Centre works with young people to understand the responses to the climate crisis and build interventions to support mental health.

Rising Faster than the Sea Levels

We are working with young people in three different global contexts (the Philippines, Australia, the Caribbean) to better understand the interactions between their thoughts and feelings in relation to climate change, their ways of coping and adapting, their climate agency, and their mental health and wellbeing.  Our project is conducted by young people and will identify non-clinical interventions that enable them to build resilience and agency in the face of the climate crisis to support their mental health.

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The Resilience Project  

The Resilience Project is a youth-led programme founded in the UK in 2020 to preserve and enhance the resilience of today's youth through a peer-support programme.

The Resilience Project now delivers 10-week Resilience Circle programmes throughout Europe and East Africa. Climate Cares, along with the CIRCLE research group at Stanford University, are evaluating the impact of the Resilience Circles on climate anxiety, risk of burnout, mental health and wellbeing, social connection, leadership capabilities and climate agency. It is the first evaluation of such a peer-support based climate-mental health intervention. The Board of Youth is co-designing the project.

Changing Worlds study

The Changing Worlds Study is establishing an evidence base for how young people are affected by climate change awareness.

In 2019 the Climate Cares programme began with the recognition of the lack of research into the nature, prevalence and severity of the impacts of climate awareness on mental health. This built on an understanding that a rapidly changing future outlook could be contributing to rising rates of psychological distress and poor mental health in young people. At the time there was no literature assessing this hypothesis.

Understanding youth response to the climate crisis

The Climate Cares Centre, led by Dr Emma Lawrance, worked with collaborators around the world to run one of the first studies to understand how young people were responding psychologically to awareness of the climate crisis, and the links with mental health, positive and negative life impacts and agency to respond.

The survey study developed with a Young Person’s Advisory Group (YPAG) and was adapted and run with partners and YPAGs in three Caribbean nations, India and the USA. Results have been featured at the Planetary Health Alliance Annual Meeting and on the WHO stage for COP27.

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