Conceptualizing a Multi-Theoretical Model for Understanding Climate Change Impacts on Youth Mental Health

Abstract Climate change is producing increasingly frequent and severe weather events, and the impact of these hazards on youth mental health, particularly among black, indigenous, youth of color, and those living in poverty, is becoming clear. This paper seeks to contribute to the growing literature on this topic by integrating theories of stress and coping, place attachment, ontological security, chronic stress, allostatic load, toxic stress, slow violence, and Critical Race Theory (CRT), concluding with an analysis of youth coping responses to climate change. Guided by this framework, I contend that climate change is a form of slow violence against youth, the historical roots of which must be understood within the context of racism and the ongoing impact of colonization and a capitalist economic system, and which continues to harm young people through disruption of attachment to place, protective caregiver qualities, and ontological security, leading to embodied expressions of allostatic load, including distressing mental health reactions. In doing so, I aim to highlight the necessity of acknowledging and attending to the interdependence between human beings and the surrounding built and natural world as a key aspect of understanding, exploring, and responding to youth mental health reactions to climate change. This, in turn, informs the research questions I aim to explore in future work, and, longer-term, the development of relevant clinical interventions, all of which will center on supporting youth in coping with climate change.