From hope and action to giving up: Students’ stories of coping with climate change

Young people and university students are particularly vulnerable to the mental health effects of climate change due to their prolonged lifetime exposure to, and increased contact with, climate change and related information through learning. Despite this, little research exists on how university students cope with climate change from a psychological perspective. In this largely qualitative mixed-methods study, we analysed data from an online survey to investigate how students (N = 823) of a large UK university cope with climate change. This survey covered which climate change situations were triggering for them, preferences for support-seeking, and specific coping strategies. Conceptual content analysis revealed that challenging situations included navigating climate change information, climate justice issues, climatic changes and environmental losses, and climate change dismissal. Findings from qualitative framework analysis further showed four ways students coped with these: by reducing the mental load of climate change, doing something constructive, seeking social support and meaning, and doomist thinking and behaviour. While many students highlighted the importance of social connections, a small minority considered seeking professional support. These findings partly support and expand on climate change-related coping literature and have implications for how higher education settings communicate about and act on climate change.