Understanding how climate change affects mental health at European level is one of the objectives of a new COST Action that has more than 600,000 euros in European funding.
Led and managed by researchers from CINTESIS and the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto (FMUP), the COST Action, entitled Climate change impacts on mental health in Europe (CliMent), officially kicked off at the end of October with the first Management Committee meeting.
At this meeting, held in Brussels at the COST Association – European Cooperation in Science and Technology, António Soares, Executive Manager of CINTESIS and researcher at FMUP, was unanimously elected Grant Holder Scientific Representative, and Francisco Sampaio, a researcher at CINTESIS@RISE and professor at the Nursing School of Porto (ESEP), was also unanimously elected Action Chair of COST Action. Both will hold their positions for four years until the end of the project.
With an expected duration of four years (from October 2024 to October 2028), this COST Action involves more than 30 countries and is funded by the European Union through the COST Association.
“The project addresses a current and emerging issue, linking climate change and, at the same time, the behavioral and emotional aspects of citizens, of which there is still not much scientific evidence,” says António Soares from FMUP.
His expectation is that “studies and projects can be developed that will help us provide evidence on this subject, contributing to the submission of scientific articles, training sessions and publications”.
According to Francisco Sampaio, “Climate change is an important current problem, widely proven by scientific evidence, with a direct environmental impact, but also with repercussions from a societal point of view”.
This same evidence shows that “the population, especially teenagers and young adults, has been showing predominantly anxious symptoms, which stems, for example, from the fact that their individual action is insufficient to put an end to the problem and from the disbelief they feel towards the political actions that have been carried out in this area”.
“What we want, essentially, is to gain a broader understanding of the impact of climate change on mental health, the coping strategies used by the affected population and, above all, to develop sustainable intervention strategies that make it possible to improve symptoms while maintaining pro-environmental behaviors. Naturally, as this is a project financed by European funds, it is crucial for us to get the main results and recommendations to the political decision-makers,” he says.