A new study published in JAMA Network Open looked at temperature exposure and psychiatric symptoms in adolescents.
“Our study is about trying to understand how exposure to temperature, both cold and heat, could be related to psychiatric symptoms in a young adult population based in the Netherlands and Spain,” study author Esmée Essers told us. “We were hoping to gain a deeper understand of how the relationship between climate change and mental health might manifest in the context of mental health symptomatology.”
Essers explained that considering they know that exposure to temperature extremes influenced mental health endpoints in the adult population, and knowing that the thermoregulatory system is likely disrupted when exposed to non-optimal temperatures, the research team expected that adolescents would suffer from more psychiatric symptoms when exposed to the colder and hotter temperatures.
“The relationship between climate change and mental health is not fully understood yet, and while research into the impact on mental health endpoints like hospitalization and suicide risk is more clearly understood, the preceding symptomology is less studied,” Esmée Essers told us. “Furthermore, most of the research is done in adults, while the younger adolescent population is an important group to evaluate considering they are still in development and their long-term health might be impacted.”
Researchers used information from participants of the Dutch Generation R Study and the Spanish INMA Project, two population studies that started over two decades ago and whose participants are now adults (approximately 21 years). They used exposure to temperature at the home address and collected information on mental health symptomatology through questionnaires that the mothers of the adolescents completed. They then tested how exposure to temperature cumulatively during different exposure periods (one week, one month, and two months) was associated with internalizing (e.g., anxiety, depressive symptoms), externalizing (e.g., aggressive symptoms), and attention problems.
“Our main results showed that exposure to colder temperatures between around 3-12ºC in the Dutch cohort was associated with more symptoms related to anxiety and depression, while in the Spanish cohort exposure to subtle warmer temperatures around 16-24ºC with more problems of attention,” Esmée Essers told us. “We were not surprised with the main results, as these fall in line with the hypothesis we had that temperature extremes might influence mental health symptomology.”
Essers explained that they interestingly saw no associations for heat in the Netherlands, or cold in Spain, and think this is due to the temperatures not being extreme enough in these locations for a physiological response to occur in the cohort populations.
“We have shown that exposure to cold and heat can influence the levels of psychiatric symptoms in adolescent populations,” Esmée Essers told us. “This study therefore contributes to the growing body of literature attempting to understand the intricate relationship between climate change and mental health.”
Considering the severity of climate change, and the daunting projections for the future, the results, Essers explained, may become more prominent and severe.
“Going forward, we hope that studies like this one can contribute to providing a science-based basis for climate policies in an attempt to mitigate the damage of climate change and protect adolescent health,” Esmée Essers told us.