Currently reading Hill-Harding et al. (2025) on “Beyond symptomatic support: Students’ emotional experiences with climate change and how universities can help”

In a study of 869 students of the University of Glasgow, Hill-Harding et al. (2025) find high level of negative climate emotions: Powerlessness, helplessness, sadness, anger. Many also report impairment due to climate anxiety. When rating agreement with different statements, participants agreed strongly with statements like “People have failed to take care of the planet” and “The future is frightening”. 2/3rds of the respondents want their university to teach more about climate change, not just general concepts, but specific and course-related, as well as about mitigation strategies. Many students also thought that the university should offer more support to students to deal with climate anxiety, like for example counselling, but also more and more transparent climate actions by the university — divest from fossil fuels, make cantinas on campus serve sustainable food, etc.

Students reported higher level of climate anxiety than the general population. But the more self-efficacy students experience, the better they cope with, or the less they experience, climate anxiety (and this is a chicken-and-egg thing, we don’t know for sure which one comes first). Interestingly, although not surprisingly, “[w]hen students thought that the university was not taking their concerns seriously enough, this was linked to higher anxiety levels“. (Or, as Marlis said in her talk: “anxiety is often about inactivity of powerful actors”). Hill-Harding et al. (2025) write that “Universities should be in an ideal position to act as role-model institutions for climate mitigation, given their body of research, resources, and educational responsibility. In fact, many participants seemed to suggest that the university’s duty of care extends beyond symptomatic support.” So universities should act on sustainability not only because that is important in itself, but also because it supports their students’ well-being: “students generally reported lower climate anxiety when thinking about pursuing a career related to climate change or lecturers shared stories of their interest in sustainability“. Also, “[s]tudents’ parents, teaching staff, and university management may respond to students’ experiences by increasing their mitigation efforts in their roles as policymakers, investors, managers, stakeholders, consumers, and role models“. And we can increase social support — talk more about our own experiences and coping strategies! — and provide trainings and meeting spaces.

Or, as Hill-Harding et al. (2025)  summarise: “Universities have a responsibility to ensure they do not increase climate change-related harm to students’ wellbeing through carbon-intense practices. Instead, implementing more climate mitigation practices and psychosocial support may benefit students’ mental wellbeing.”

Hill-Harding, C. K., Barsalou, L. W., & Papies, E. K. (2025). Beyond symptomatic support: Students’ emotional experiences with climate change and how universities can help [Author Accepted Manuscript]. Global Environmental Psychology.