Journal article
The perceived impact of climate change on mental health and suicidality in Kenyan high school students
- Abstract:
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Background
Climate change has psychological impacts but most of the attention has been focused on the physical impact. This study was aimed at determining the association of climate change with adolescent mental health and suicidality as reported by Kenyan high school students.Methods
This was a cross sectional study with a sample size of 2,652. The participants were high school students selected from 10 schools in 3 regions of Kenya. A questionnaire was used to assess climate change experiences, mental health problems, and suicidality of the youth. Data were analyzed descriptively and with logistic regression to determine various associations of the different variables and the predictors of the various scores of SDQ and suicidality at 95% CI.Results
Significant differences were observed between gender and two of the threats of climate change – worry and being afraid as subjectively experienced by the participants. Females were more worried and afraid of climate change than males. On univariate and multivariate logistic regression, we found that various experiences of climate change were significantly associated with various scores of SDQ and much fewer of the experiences predicted SDQ scores. The same pattern was reflected in suicidality.Conclusion
Climate change appears to be associated with mental health concerns and suicidality according to Kenyan high school students’ reports with gender differences in some associations.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 1.1MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1186/s12888-024-05568-8
Authors
- Publisher:
- BioMed Central
- Journal:
- BMC Psychiatry More from this journal
- Volume:
- 24
- Issue:
- 1
- Article number:
- 117
- Publication date:
- 2024-02-12
- Acceptance date:
- 2024-01-29
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1471-244X
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1613128
- Local pid:
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pubs:1613128
- Deposit date:
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2024-02-05
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Ndetei et al
- Copyright date:
- 2024
- Rights statement:
- © The Author(s) 2024. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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