Psychological Distress and Increased Climate Action
Scientific Reports
Grades9, 10, 11, 12, APHealth
This resource has been reviewed by SubjectToClimate's climate scientists and verified for scientific accuracy and up-to-date information. Learn about our review process →
Provided by Yale Program on Climate Change Communication
What it is
- In this Yale report, students will learn about the connection between climate anxiety and the desire to participate in climate action.
- Students will also see how people experience more or less climate-induced psychological distress depending on their political views, gender, age, race, or socioeconomic status.
Teaching tips
Positives
- This study may comfort students who are feeling anxious and depressed about climate change as they learn that others feel this way, too.
- The study emphasizes action as a way to cope with climate anxiety.
Prerequisites
- Students should understand climate change and its impacts.
- Students should be familiar with scientific reports and technical writing.
Differentiation & Implementation
- Teachers and students can work together to create a guide for students who feel anxious about climate change, depending on their stress response. For example, students who feel compelled to act when learning about climate change may benefit from resources in the Civics and Climate Action Student Lab, while students who feel paralyzed when learning about climate change may first need to process with the Climate Emotions Wheel.
- If students have never read a scientific report before, teachers may want to incorporate a few reports from Project Drawdown's Table of Solutions before beginning with this report to familiarize students with the structure.
- After reading the section about the connection between high levels of climate anxiety and the willingness to engage in discussion about climate change, the video The Key to Fighting Climate Change: Talk About It may help solidify the importance of talking about climate change, an idea the report touches on.
- Some students may benefit from reading just the Abstract or Results sections, as the Methods section (especially the Analysis subsection) has a lot of content-specific and technical terms.
- Using Figure 1 as a reference, students can hypothesize why certain groups have higher percentages of climate anxiety compared to others.
From the scientist review
This resource is a journal article that explores the relationship between feelings of climate anxiety and depression and the level of climate action humans take. Differences between populations with varying characteristics were also explored (political party, age, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, etc.), which touches on climate justice. In addition to being a good resource about climate distress, the article is a great example of science writing and the scientific research process. The information presented is accurate, and this resource is recommended for teaching.
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