join australia's largest youth survey on climate & mental health

Climate change and mental health are two of the greatest global challenges we face. Young people in particular report that their mental health has been impacted by climate change. There is a lot of evidence in the news and from psychologists that young people are being emotionally affected, e.g. made anxious or angry, by problems with the environment.

This study aims to explore young people’s experience of climate change and how it affects their mental health, explore ways that increase young people’s coping skills and psychological resilience to climate change that in turn can improve their mental health, and co-create solutions with young people to protect youth mental health.

The survey is conducted by Curtin University, ecomind, Psychology for a Safe Climate, the Black Dog Institute and Imperial College London’s Connecting Climate Minds. This project is not funded by any grant and all contributions have been made in-kind.

This project is conducted by a global team led by the Climate Cares Centre at Imperial College London. This project is funded by AXA.

We are recruiting young people aged 18-30 from a variety of backgrounds to see how they feel about climate change and mental health. We want to hear the views of young people who have experience of climate impacts (such as bushfires, floods, hurricanes) and those who are affected by their participation in climate action. We want to hear from those who have witnessed climate events but may not experienced it themselves first hand. We also want to hear from people who have experienced problems with their mental health and wellbeing that they feel is directly related to climate change.

If you agree to take part, you will be taken through a series of questionnaires (on the platform Qualtrics or on a paper-based survey), some with boxes to select your answers and some with open-ended boxes for you to write your thoughts in. The first form will ask for your consent to take part, then you will be asked some questions about your background (including history of mental health), before a series of questionnaires about your emotional health and wellbeing, your responses and feelings about environmental problems and how these might affect you emotionally, and your hopes, fears and expectations for the future. This should take about 15 minutes in total. Your responses are anonymised (allocated a personal ID number) and kept separately from any personal identifiers such as your name or contact details, so there is no way they will be traced back to you.

We cannot promise that this project will help you directly. We hope that the information we get and the outputs we produce will help people working in research, policy, practice, health systems and beyond who are already working in or who are interested in how climate change affects the mental health of young people. We hope this work will also help young people who are experiencing climate impacts and people with their experience of mental health challenges.

If you take part in the survey, you will have the chance to win a 2-night off-grid nature getaway offered by Unyoked. If you submit your contact details during in the survey, your email will be put into the draw and one winner will be randomly chosen from all survey entries. You have a 1 in 500 chance of winning. Entries are open now, until 12/04/2025; the result of the draw will be announced on ecomind’s Instagram account (@ecomind_au) and the winner will be notified via email on 01/04/2025. Eligibility to enter the draw is not dependent on completing any survey questions. You must however submit your survey within the draw period as outlined above.

Having an awareness of, learning about and talking about the climate crisis, and/or talking about mental health, can bring up a range of emotional responses, some of which may be distressing or uncomfortable. If you believe this will be especially distressing to you, we ask that you do not take part. If you take part and do find it distressing, please feel free to stop at any point. If you need additional support, please contact Dr Ans Vercammen (ans.vercammen@curtin.edu.au) . 

You can also seek help through the following support:

Psychology for a Safe Climate’s Climate Aware Practitioner Network, if you need ongoing climate mental health support.

‍Headspace provides centres across Australia and online support for individuals aged 12-25. https://headspace.org.au/

‍Kids Helpline provides free support and counselling to people aged 5 - 25. Please call 1800 55 1800 or access online at Kids Helpline | Phone Counselling Service | 1800 55 1800

ReachOut offers self-help information, peer support, and referral tools for individuals under 25. https://au.reachout.com/

‍SANE Australia offers mental health support for individuals aged 18+, their friends, families, and communities. Call - 1800 187 263; or SANE Australia

‍Lifeline is a 24-hour crisis service for all ages, reachable at 13 11 14. Lifeline Australia - 13 11 14 - Crisis Support. Suicide Prevention.

‍“Your Brain on Climate” PodcastListen to the "Your Brain on Climate" podcast, where host Dave Powell discusses how understanding brain function can help tackle the climate crisis. https://www.yourbrainonclimate.com/

The information collected in this research will be non-identifiable (anonymous). This means that we do not need to collect individual names or information is anonymous and will not include a code number or name. No one, not even the research team will be able to identify your information. The following people will have access to the information we collect in this research: the research team and, in the event of an audit or investigation, staff from the Curtin University Office of Research and Development.

At the end of the survey, you will be redirected to a ‘Stay Connected and Enter the Draw’ form where we will give you the option to opt-in to ongoing information or to enter the draw to win survey prize. We will ask for your name and email address when we collect the data, to allow us to contact you if you are the winner of our prize draw. As the survey and forms are separate, this means the data we collect for the survey will remain non-identifiable. After the prize draw, we will remove all identifying information from the form, unless you have opted to be contacted regarding further updates or research.

Electronic data will be password-protected. The information we collect in this study will be kept under secure conditions at Curtin University for 7 years after the research is published and then it will be kept indefinitely.

The results of the research will be published in a public-facing report, which will be available on ecomind’s website. The results of this research may be presented at conferences or published in professional journals. You will not be identified in any results that are published or presented.