Grace van Deelen, Research Intern at Tufts University Office of Sustainability 

Recently, colleges and universities are witnessing a sharp increase in the number of students seeking mental health treatment. In line with the national trend, Tufts University has seen a notable increase in the number of students with significant and ongoing mental health needs.  

In response to increased needs for mental health resources, Tufts University President Anthony P. Monaco launched the Mental Health Task Force in 2016. After undertaking extensive research on the mental health needs trends in all four campuses, the Mental Health Task Force reported in 2019 that students are suffering from increasing mental health issues, particularly those related to anxiety and severe stress. 

While the Report of the Mental Health Task Force did not mention the environment as a possible contributing reason, climate change’s associated mental health risks could be responsible for this sharp increase in the number of students with mental health needs. Climate change could contribute to mental health disorders in multiple ways, either directly or indirectly, and affects even those of us who do not live in places experiencing climate-change-induced natural disasters. Here are some of the following ways that climate change affects mental well-being: 

Immediate or long-term exposure to climate-induced natural disasters has been proven to cause multiple mental health disorders.  

The most common varieties of mental health disorders caused by this direct experience with climate change are post-traumatic stress disorders, increased levels of anxiety, depression, increases in aggressive behavior and domestic violence, and self-harm that might lead to suicidal ideation and substance abuse. In fact, according to a 2016 study from the American Psychological Association, 25-50% of people exposed to an extreme weather disaster are at risk of adverse mental health effects.  

Climate change could create a feeling of loss or grief for a changing world.  

While the direct mental health impacts of climate-change-induced traumatic events are important, climate change can incur mental health impacts in individuals who have not experienced such events, as well. Even the tiny changes in one’s environment, such as a decrease in yearly snowfall, or a shifting of other familiar seasonal markers, can create a sense of anxiety. One paper by Wooster College Psychology Professor Susan Clayton described climate anxiety as a “loss of ontological security,” which is a feeling that one’s knowledge, way of being, or understanding of the world is no longer true due to the landscape changes that climate change can cause. Other vocabulary that describes this feeling include: solastalgia, a type of loss that happens when people become less familiar with the place in which they live, biospheric concern, a type of anxiety that happens when people perceive animals or plants in danger, and eco-anxiety, a feeling of loss, helplessness, and frustration caused by climate change, according to Paolo Cianconi, a neuroscience professor at Catholic University in Rome, Italy. 

Climate change can cause anxiety and worry about the future among young people.  

This climate anxiety or “eco-anxiety,” according to the American Psychological Association, is a leading cause of worry among young adults and college students. The unpredictability of climate change increases worry and anxiety in college students because they tend to be young people who spend much of their time planning for the future. A 2018 Gallup poll of 4,103 adults living in all 50 states and the District of Columbia found that 70% of 18- to-34 year-olds worry “a great deal” about global warming, compared to 63% of adults aged 35- to-54 and 56% of adults aged 55 and older. A national poll by Clayton in 2019 found that 57% of teens said that “climate change makes them feel afraid.” The same poll found that “a small, but not inconsequential, proportion of the public (17-27%) reported a degree of climate anxiety that was having some impact on their ability to function.” In general, younger age groups worry more about climate change than older adults.  

Climate change is making young people re-think their life plans.  

A 2020 Washington Post article quoted an 18-year-old from Alabama on the confounding stresses of college life during the climate crisis; “The ice caps are melting and my hypothetical children won’t get to see them, but also I have a calculus test tomorrow.” This is a familiar feeling among college students, and having children is becoming a widespread topic of concern among young people. This trend is evidenced by movements such as the BirthStrike movement, a worldwide movement of people refusing to have children due to the ecological crisis. A New York Times poll in 2018 found that “25% of the 1,800 Americans surveyed said they expected to have fewer children than they considered ideal; of these, 33% cited worry about climate change.” 

Climate change’s mental health impacts will continue to be more widespread.  

As climate change accelerates, the mental health impacts of climate change will not only be limited to young people and those who have experienced climate-induced traumatic events. As climate change becomes more widespread and serious, so will its mental health impacts, according to a paper by Policy Analyst Dr. Katie Hayes. For example, while the Boston area has been spared from the most severe hurricanes and wildfires recently, it can expect to see continued increases in sea levels, extreme precipitation, and extreme high temperatures in the future, according to Boston Research Advisory Group’s 2016 report . Even though Tufts may seem far away from these events at the moment, climate-induced natural disasters will become more common in the future. Furthermore, is important to note that many Tufts students either live in or have family in parts of the world that are experiencing climate disasters far more frequently than the Boston area, and are therefore susceptible to the immediate mental health impacts that these events can bring.  

Individual and institutional commitments to climate activism, along with climate literacy among counselors, can help to alleviate these climate-induced mental health problems, according to Yale Climate Connections. Part of the efforts to alleviate these mental health issues among college students should include initiatives from universities that display a commitment to meaningful climate action, in addition to improving campus mental health resources. 

The full Tufts Office of Sustainability memo on this topic can be found here, while an annotated bibliography of literature pertaining to this topic can be found here.

A Sudden Twist: Gearing up for a March Move Out

Each year, the Office of Sustainability (OOS) runs a robust donation collection program throughout the month of May, when students are moving out, finals are done, the air is warm, and folks are gearing up for their summer internships.

Student Move Out this year was anything but normal amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. It came as a surprise to everyone when the University announced on the evening of March 10^th that all students would have to move entirely out of their on-campus residence halls by 3:00 pm on March 16^th.

The OOS’s annual donation program serves to divert good items from the landfill and to instead provide them to students and community members who will use them. Even in light of early Move-Out, we still wanted to maintain our sustainability values and help the Tufts community and its neighbors.

Due to the pandemic, the first step was to consult with a health expert at Tufts about whether it would be safe to collect donations at all and if so, what. There were select items that we could not collect this year because we could not sanitize them or because they are not high demand and there was limited time/capacity.  

Still, our entire office—from staff to recycling interns to communications interns—rallied together and made some magic happen. In the first day after the Move-Out announcement was made, we quickly created a donation station schedule, recruited and hired workers to help, rented vehicles, planned donation rules and two donation collection stations, ordered supplies, and secured a space for donation storage. Facilities quickly requested open top dumpsters to be placed around campus to accommodate the increased trash flow.

Early Move Out In-Action: New and Improved Collaborations

We even tried something new: due to the short notice, we were not able to get the trailers that we normally use to collect textiles. Instead, we collaborated with the Office of Residential Life and Learning (ORLL) to provide blue bags to students in residence hall lobbies, which they could use to store their clothing donations and leave them in their rooms, along with mini fridges labeled as donations. We also provided clear and black liners that students could use to take their recycling and trash out to the dumpsters and leave the space clean for the custodians.

Another pleasant surprise was a new collaboration with the Tufts Food Rescue Collaborative (TFRC). The TFRC was working with multicultural offices and Tufts Mutual Aid to create a food pantry available to the Tufts community during this difficult time (and when many store shelves were empty!). We collected almost 1,000 lbs of non-perishable food donations for the pantry.

Over the course of the week, we hired 30 student workers to help during the day and evening. Most were students who lived off-campus, had some free time due to extended spring break, and had discontinued jobs or internships. The donations program would not have been possible without the workers: they were patient, independent, and good-spirited (even in the cold!).

With their help, we were able to not only run the stations for long hours, but also to transport all donations to our storage space and sort them into categories there. Some of them even came with us to retrieve donations from the residence halls on the Health Sciences and SMFA campuses in Boston. We were lucky that we already had enough gloves and other PPE in storage before COVID-19, and that our workers were both social distancing warriors and heavy-lifting champions.

A Job Well Done (and a nap for all!)

In the end, we diverted 6.42 tons (12,833 lbs) of donations from the landfills during Early Move Out. These donations will be provided to FIRST Resource Center students, the general Tufts student body, and/or to local non-profits/charities.

The quick planning it took to make this happen was not possible without collaboration from our office’s staff and interns, Facilities, TUPD, Auxillary Services, The Office of Residential Life and Learning, the FIRST Resource Center, the Tufts Food Rescue Collaborative, and campus’s hardworking custodial staff.

Early Move Out by the Numbers

We collected 6.42 tons (12,833 lbs) during March, including:

• 303 lbs of sanitation/health items
• 3,291 lbs of food and kitchen items/appliances
• 1,786 lbs of home supplies such as vacuums, mirrors, lamps, and storage bins
• 5,683 lbs of clothes
• 881 lbs of furniture
• 50 lbs of miscellaneous items

Student workers hired: 30

Total student hours worked: 267.5

Total last-minute rentals: 1 U-Haul box-truck, 1 U-Haul van, 2 U-pods

Total last-minute purchases: 1 Facebook ad, 6 rolls of packing tape, and granola bars!

Total acquisitions: We attained 6 sandbags—very handy to put in the donation collection bins on windy/rainy days. (Thanks Facilities!)

Total handy reuse strategies: We can’t forget about the 2 gaylords we had in storage from last year, or the 10 slim jims that we used as donation collection bins at the donation stations (we had attempted to order cardboard boxes for 1-day delivery, but they never arrived). We were also able to reuse donation items to organize our supplies and donations.

Total signs: We used or created 15 types of signs: 9 different signs for each of the donation collection streams, 1 for U-Pods (students could leave donations in there overnight), 1 yard sign for the upper campus donation station, 1 for the lower, 1 yard sign directing folks to dumpsters, 1 banner for recycling dumpsters, and 1 banner for trash dumpsters.

Total social media posts: 1 blog post, 2 Instagram/Twitter/FB posts, an Instagram story takeover, and a Move Out email to students from ORLL.

And finally: 1 wild 70-hour work week from our Recycling Fellow!

Update: May Move Out Day!

Despite Early Move-Out, some juniors and seniors stayed in their off campus apartments to finish off the academic year. As the end of May–and a lease-period–drew near, two of our interns, Serena and Elyssa, became aware of how many items they would have to put into trash dumpsters as they and their housemates moved out, especially with public donation venues closed due to the COVID-19.

At their initiative, we were able to organize a one-time May donation collection station for remaining students. The event was organized in just a day and announced online. A few dozen students came, masks and all, to donate their textbooks, fans, toaster ovens, excess cleaning supplies, entire dish-ware sets, storage units, and mini-fridges!

In just a 4-hour window, we collected an additional 894 lbs. We also collected 6,845 additional pounds of Move Out textile donations during May, bringing our 2020 Move Out total to 20,572.25 lbs and 10.29 tons!