Growing (up) in times of multiple crises – A call for mental health (research) action

Abstract

The rock band Fury in the slaughterhouse sang that “every generation got its own disease”, however, remaining in that wording, the current generation of children and adolescents in Europe has to cope with several severe “diseases” at the same time: the war of Russia against Ukraine, the social and mental health consequences of the Covid-19-pandemic, the economic downturn, societal polarization, and last but not least, the twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate change. Each of these crises have visible and measurable consequences, and some crises mutually reinforce each other. The climate crisis, for instance, has already brought irreversible damage to some societies and natural habitats around the world. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2023), weather phenomena such as droughts, storms and floods will become more likely and more intense. It is estimated that people who are born today will experience heat waves up to seven times more often than people who are in their forties to sixties today (Thiery et al., 2021). Furthermore, climate change is linked to macroeconomic consequences negatively affect­ ing the economic situations of states and individuals and is thus a driving force behind increasing poverty (e.g., Kotz et al., 2021). The climate crisis also accelerates biodiversity loss. Further, both environmental degradation as well as climate change undermine peace and increase the likelihood for conflict between groups, representing additional stressors for development both on an individual and a societal level (e.g., Palmer, 2022). Unsurpris­ ingly, a recent meta-analysis shows that climate events are negatively correlated with mental health (Cuijpers et al., 2023), and a recent review demonstrates that the risk for