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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Clim.
Sec. Climate and Health
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fclim.2025.1568676
This article is part of the Research Topic Climate Change Anxiety View all 6 articles
Climate change distress and impairment among adolescents in Germany
Provisionally accepted- 1 Stiftung Gesundheitswissen, Berlin, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
- 2 Amsterdam School of Communication Research, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
- 3 Fachbereich Sozialwesen, Katholische Hochschule Nordrhein-Westfalen, Münster, Bremen, Germany
Climate change is one of the most consequential challenges in the 21 st century with widespread consequences, including its effect on mental health. A recently developed questionnaire distinguishes between the affective responses to climate change, including negative emotions (distress), and functional impairments. Adolescents are considered particularly vulnerable but have not yet been studied concerning these dimensions. This study investigates the prevalence and distribution of climate change distress and impairment and their association with sociodemographic factors and health literacy in a representative sample of adolescents living in Germany.In a cross-sectional quota-based survey, N = 1021 adolescents (inclusion criteria: age 12-17 years, enrollment in school, living in Germany, sufficient German knowledge) completed an online or face-to-face interview assessing the climate change distress and impairment scales (CC-DIS), sociodemographic information and a health literacy questionnaire (HLS-EU-Q16). ANOVAs and t-tests were used to analyze differences between sociodemographic groups and different levels of health literacy.The results show that many adolescents are both distressed and impaired by climate change. Higher distress was found in girls vs. boys, those with high vs. low levels of education and high social status vs. lower social status. Higher impairment was found in girls vs. boys, 14-15-year-olds vs. 12-13-year-olds and 16-17-year-olds, those with low vs. high levels of education, and those with inadequate and problematic vs. adequate health literacy.Discussion. Further research is needed to explore the underlying mechanisms and develop effective strategies to support adolescent mental health in the face of climate change.
Keywords: Climate Change, distress, impairment, Mental Health, Survey, adolescents
Received: 30 Jan 2025; Accepted: 11 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 König, Schröder, Breves, Linnemann, Hamer and Suhr. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Lars König, Stiftung Gesundheitswissen, Berlin, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
Rebekka Schröder, Stiftung Gesundheitswissen, Berlin, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
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