Mental health affectations caused by climate change in German and Dutch population
Theme: Well-being in social and societal contexts
Description:
Climate change poses one of the biggest threats to human life and all the life on the planet. Research related to the impact of climate change on mental health is still limited. From the available evidence, it has been observed that climate change can be related to anxiety, post-traumatic stress, and depression (Hrabok et al., 2020), among others. One of the main problems regarding analyzing the impact on mental health caused by climate change is the lack of available scientific literature that includes questionnaires that measure specifically the affectation on mental health caused by climate change compared with established questionnaires such as GAD-7 (Spitzer, et al., 20006) and the correlation between them.
Furthermore, concepts such as eco-anxiety, eco-grief, and Solastalgia, are emerging, but they are still underexplored in the Dutch and German populations.
In this study, we will continue a previous original study conducted at the University of Twente, where instruments were translated and validated in German and Dutch populations, along with including further measurements and comparing them with established questionnaires to measure anxiety, depression, affected sleep quality, among others. We will build an assessment battery that will be distributed through Qualtrics.
References
Hrabok, M., Delorme, A., & Agyapong, V. I. O. (2020). Threats to Mental Health and Well-Being Associated with Climate Change. Journal of anxiety disorders, 76, 102295. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2020.102295.
Spitzer, R. L., Kroenke, K., Williams, J. B., & Löwe, B. (2006). A brief measure for assessing generalized anxiety disorder: the GAD-7. Archives of internal medicine, 166(10), 1092–1097. https://doi.org/10.1001/archinte.166.10.1092
Who are we looking for?
Students with an interest in working with topics related to climate change and quantitative data.