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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Environmental Psychology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1408835
This article is part of the Research Topic Climate Change Challenge: Adaptation to Climate Change View all 15 articles

Exploring the relationship between eco-anxiety and suicide risk in adolescents with mental health disorders: Insights from a crosssectional observational study

Provisionally accepted
Apolline Lerolle Apolline Lerolle 1Jean-arthur Micoulaud Franchi Jean-arthur Micoulaud Franchi 2FOURNERET Pierre FOURNERET Pierre 1Alexandre Heeren Alexandre Heeren 3Christophe Gauld Christophe Gauld 1*
  • 1 Hospices Civils de Lyon, Lyon, Rhône-Alpes, France
  • 2 Université de Bordeaux, Bordeaux, Aquitaine, France
  • 3 Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Walloon Brabant, Belgium

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    A limited number of studies have explored the connection between eco-anxiety, anxiety, and depression in adolescents. However, the relation between eco-anxiety and suicide remains unexamined. This cross-sectional observational study aims to bridge this gap by investigating the correlation between eco-anxiety intensity and suicide risk severity in adolescents.Methods. We used validated French versions of the Climate Anxiety Scale (CAS) and its two key dimensions (cognitive and emotional and functional impairments), alongside the Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale (C-SSRS) and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression scale (HAD).Results. Our study involved 87 hospitalized adolescent patients, aged 12 to 16. Although, the univariate model indicated a significant association between the CAS and the C-SSRS (β = 2.58; p=0.049), the cognitive/emotional difficulties and functional impairment dimensions of eco-anxiety, considering different confounding factors, did not show statistical associations with the severity of suicide risk (respectively, p = 0.81 and p = 0.76).Discussion. In an expansive literature, these results show for the first time that eco-anxiety may not be the priority of adolescents seen by adolescent psychiatrists. Such an observation would imply not overmedicalizing a dimension of life which perhaps does not fall solely within the field of medicine, but which concerns environmental issues broader than medical field. However, an ethical and prudent approach in mental health care for this particularly fragile population remains necessary. This intersection of eco-anxiety and suicide in youth opens up new avenues of research in the realm of environmental and mental health studies.

    Keywords: Eco-anxiety, Climate anxiety, Suicide, Adolescent, Anxiety, Depression

    Received: 28 Mar 2024; Accepted: 09 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Lerolle, Micoulaud Franchi, Pierre, Heeren and Gauld. 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: Christophe Gauld, Hospices Civils de Lyon, Lyon, 69002, Rhône-Alpes, France

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