It’s the heat: how climate impacts young people's mental health

In 5 seconds Over the next five years, two UdeM experts will take part in a $5.45-million study on how exposure to heat makes urban teens and young adults more vulnerable to depression, anxiety and psychosis.
Exposure to heat has profound systemic negative effects on people's physical and mental health.

Two Université de Montréal health experts, Jura Augustinavicius and Guido Simonelli, have been awarded a $5.45-million grant along with five other researchers in Quebec, the U.S., Mexico and Argentina to study how young people’s mental health is impacted by heat in cities.

Awarded by the U.K.-based Wellcome Trust, the five-year grant will support the Youth in Urban Centres across the Americas (YUCA) project, aimed at “understanding and addressing heat impacts on mental health.”

The grant will allow the researchers to “characterize mechanisms at the environmental, social, physiological, and biological levels linking heat exposure to mental health among urban youth (16-35 years) in the Americas.”

Said Augustinavicius, an associate professor at UdeM's School of Public Health and the study’s lead investigator: “During the warmer periods of the year we will follow cohorts of youth experiencing at least mild symptoms of depression, anxiety and psychosis and who may benefit from mental health care in Montreal, Querétaro (Mexico), and Buenos Aires (Argentina).”

An expert in climate change and mental health who was hired at UdeM last summer, Augustinavicius will be joined in the project by her co-investigator Simonelli, an UdeM associate professor of medicine and a sleep scientist who conducts his research at the UdeM-affiliated CIUSSS NIM Research Centre.

"We will assess temperature exposure, mental-health outcomes, and a range of potential mechanisms including air pollution and other environmental factors, social isolation, cognition, sleep, physical activity, cardiovascular function, use of psychotropic medications, brain function and tissue properties, and demographic characteristics," Simonelli said.

Added Augustinavicius: "We will adapt existing mental health services to integrate intervention components that protect mental health in the context of heat and that have been co-designed with youth.

“Our project will generate novel datasets from middle- and high-income countries across diverse contexts and research processes that can be used by the broader scientific community in the future to advance research in this area.”

Joining the UdeM researchers will be Mallar Chakravarty and Lani Cupo of McGill University and its affiliated Douglas Research Centre, Josiah Kephart (Drexel University, in Philadelphia), Eduardo Garza-Villarreal (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, in Querétaro) and Carolina Abulafia (Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina and CONICET, in Buenos Aires).

Jura Augustinavicius, associate professor at UdeM's School of Public Health
Guido Simonelli, associate professor of medicine at UdeM

Heat waves expected to triple, at least

The impact of climate change in urban centres across the Americas is clear: temperatures are increasing and heatwaves becoming more frequent; indeed, they're expected to at least triple in the coming decades, the researchers say.

And exposure to heat has profound systemic negative effects on people's physical and mental health, they point out.

What's the impact on young people? "We know that adolescence and young adulthood constitute a dynamic period of social, neuropsychological and biological changes," said Augustinavicius.

“The evidence suggests that short-term fluctuations in temperature are a risk factor for mental health problems, and elevated temperatures and heat waves are associated with increased risk of suicide and mental health-related hospital admissions, including among youth.”

Added Simonelli: The compounding effects of heat exposure may make adolescents and young adults who are already in need of services for depression, anxiety, and psychosis particularly vulnerable to a worsening of their mental health."

 

Not just hospitalizations and suicides

Much of the literature on heat and mental health relies on linking ambient temperature to hospital visits and suicides, the researchers say. 

Other approaches are needed, "to look at a range of mental-health outcomes, not only the most severe outcomes, and to understand the mechanistic relationships between heat exposure and mental health," said Augustinavicius.

"This can help to define and refine heat adaptation interventions that can be embedded within existing systems of mental health care — and these interventions should be co-designed with young people," she said.

"The evidence from this project will allow us to better target interventions to support  young people's mental health and help them adapt to climate change."

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Jeff Heinrich
Université de Montréal
Phone: 514-343-6111, ext. 75930