Polycrisis and its impact on mental health of the global population: A scoping review
Method Stream: Literature Review
ECs Only 14 EC (standard, no new/own data collection. Applicable in case of a clinical internship)
Description:
The global population's mental health is affected by several threats such as climate change, economic crisis, war and conflicts, among others. Moreover, also other stressors that have already occurred, such as COVID-19, which has affected several people. The impact of these stressors has been previously researched on an individual basis, but research on their overall interconnections is understudied. A concept that could bring all these together is polycrisis, which analyses how several stressors are interconnected and their impact on individuals (McNamara & Bambra, 2025).
Although the relevance of polycrisis and its impact on mental health has been studied, the available research is limited, and only a few reviews (e.g., Paredes-Marquez & Giatti, 2025) address this topic without a specific focus on mental health. Therefore, it is relevant to conduct a literature review that analyses the available literature on general mental health.
The objective of this project is to conduct a scoping review to analyze the available literature regarding the impact on mental health due to polycrisis. For this thesis, you will have access to AI tools such as Covidence to support your project. The results of this study can help move forward with research on polycrisis and how interventions can be tailored to support the population.
References
McNamara, C., & Bambra, C. (2025). The Global Polycrisis and Health Inequalities. International journal of social determinants of health and health services, 55(3), 238–248. https://doi.org/10.1177/27551938251317472
Paredes-Marquez, Y., & Giatti, L. L. (2025). Health and coping mechanisms of adult migrants in the face of climate change and polycrisis: a systematic review. Regional Environmental Change, 25(4), 1-11.