Climate Distress Hits Vulnerable Young Australians Hardest, Year-Long Study Finds

Climate change is often described as the greatest health threat of the twenty-first century, and young people are expected to carry a disproportionate share of its burden. A new study from Australian researchers, published in BMC Psychiatry, offers one of the most detailed quantitative portraits yet of how climate distress operates in a cohort of young Australians, tracking its associations with mental health, sleep, and substance use over a full year. The findings paint a picture that is both sobering and nuanced: climate distress does not fall evenly across the population, and its psychological consequences unfold in ways that may deepen existing inequalities.

The research team, led by Eliza-Rose Gordon of the Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use at the University of Sydney, recruited 323 young Australians with an average age of 20.26 years. Crucially, these participants had recently lived through a series of climate-related events, meaning the study captured distress in a population with direct, fresh exposure rather than abstract concern. The work was conducted during 2020 and 2021, a period that overlapped with bushfire recovery and the disruptions of the pandemic era in Australia.

Methodologically, the study combined two analytical approaches. First, a cross-sectional analysis used univariate and multivariate regression to identify which characteristics were associated with higher climate distress at the study’s baseline. Second, a longitudinal analysis employed linear mixed models, a statistical framework well suited to repeated-measures data because it can model both fixed effects and individual-level variation over time. This allowed the researchers to estimate how baseline climate distress predicted changes in depression, stress, anxiety, sleep quality, and substance use across the one-year follow-up.

The cross-sectional results were striking in their demographic patterning. Female participants and gender-diverse individuals reported significantly higher climate distress than their respective counterparts. So did young people classified as NEET, meaning not engaged in employment, education, or training, a marker often associated with social and economic marginalisation. These patterns suggest that climate distress is not distributed randomly but concentrates among groups already carrying elevated psychosocial risk.

Psychological characteristics also mattered. Participants reporting greater altruism showed higher climate distress, a finding consistent with the idea that concern for others and for the wider world can intensify the emotional weight of the climate crisis. Elevated depression and stress at baseline were likewise associated with higher climate distress, while, somewhat counterintuitively, lower anxiety was also linked to greater distress. The authors interpret the broader pattern as evidence that those already disposed to poorer mental health tend to experience climate distress more acutely.

The longitudinal findings add temporal depth to this picture. Using linear mixed models, the team found that climate distress was linked to increasing depression and stress symptoms over the one-year period. In other words, young people with higher climate distress tended to experience worsening depressive and stress symptoms as time passed, holding the door open to the possibility that climate distress functions not merely as a correlate of poor mental health but as a contributing factor to its trajectory.

Not every outcome followed the expected direction. Climate distress was not associated with anxiety, sleep quality, or alcohol consumption in the longitudinal models, indicating that its psychological footprint is more selective than a blanket worsening of all mental health domains. Perhaps most intriguingly, higher climate distress was linked to reductions in drug use. The authors do not overinterpret this result, but it complicates simple narratives in which environmental worry uniformly drives harmful coping behaviours; the relationship between eco-emotions and substance use may be more complex and context-dependent.

The study employed a suite of validated instruments to measure its outcomes, including the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales, known as the DASS-21, the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test, and the Drug Use Disorders Identification Test. Altruism was assessed with the Altruistic Attitudes and Behaviours Scale. The researchers also used directed acyclic graphs, a formal graphical tool for representing causal assumptions, to guide their modelling of relationships between climate distress and each outcome, an approach that strengthens the transparency of the analysis even though observational data cannot establish causation definitively.

For the authors, the central conclusion is that climate change may exacerbate pre-existing inequalities through its mental health consequences. Because higher climate distress tends to be experienced by those already vulnerable, whether by gender identity, employment status, or baseline mental health, the climate crisis risks functioning as an inequality amplifier in the psychological domain. This framing shifts the policy conversation from treating eco-anxiety as a universal experience to identifying and supporting the specific groups most affected.

The practical implications are clear. The researchers argue that their findings justify targeted interventions for climate distress, both to lessen its impact on vulnerable groups and to blunt its contribution to the wider mental-health crisis as the climate crisis intensifies. As extreme weather events grow more frequent in Australia and worldwide, longitudinal evidence of this kind will become increasingly valuable for health systems deciding where to direct psychological support. The study, published open access under a Creative Commons licence, received funding support through an Australian Government Research Training Programme scholarship and an NHMRC investigator grant, and was approved by the University of Sydney’s Human Research Ethics Committee.

Subject of Research: Climate distress and its mental health impacts among young Australians

Article Title: Estimating the impacts of climate distress amongst an Australian youth population

Article References: Gordon, E.-R., Bower, M., Crandon, T., Barrett, E., Prior, K., Grummitt, L., Lawler, S., Marsden, J., & Stapinski, L. (2026). Estimating the impacts of climate distress amongst an Australian youth population. BMC Psychiatry. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-026-08479-y

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12888-026-08479-y

Keywords: climate distress, eco-anxiety, mental health, youth, depression, stress, substance use, Australia, longitudinal study, climate change, health inequalities, Estimating