Study: The cold can cause depression ... and the heat leads to attention problems

A new study revealed the effect of the weather on the mental health of adolescents, as the results showed that exposure to low temperatures in the Netherlands is associated with increasing internal psychological problems such as anxiety and depression, while exposure to hot temperatures in Spain increases attention problems. The study, which relies on accurate temperature data in place of housing, showed that these effects emerged mainly during the previous two months to judge the psychological condition. These results emphasize the importance of understanding the effects of climate change on the mental health of young people, with the need to adopt health strategies to adapt to these changes. The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, has targeted the relationship between exposure to temperatures and psychological problems, including internal problems (such as anxiety and depression), external problems (such as aggression) and attention problems, among adolescents in the Netherlands and Spain. The temperature and mental health included the study 3 thousand and 934 participants from the Netherlands and 885 participants from Spain, and focused on analyzing daily temperatures during the periods that preceded the evaluation of symptoms. The study showed that exposure to low temperatures, between 3.3 degrees Celsius and 12.4 Celsius, in the Netherlands, is associated with increased internal problems such as anxiety and depression. Research indicates that exposure to cold disorders in the body’s function, including the brain, causes due to physiological reactions such as the narrowing of blood vessels, infections and tremors. Although some previous studies did not find a correlation between cold and psychological problems while using large -scale data, this study, thanks to its high accuracy, was able to reveal this relationship. The absence of the link in Spain may be due to the inadequacy of exposure to the cold to stimulate a physiological response, as the temperature was cooler than the peer in the Netherlands. On the other hand, the study revealed that exposure to hot temperatures, between 15.6 degrees Celsius and 24.3 degrees Celsius, is associated with increasing attention problems in three regions in Spain. It is not possible that the heat affects the body by increasing infections, high levels of cortisol and sleep disorder, leading to effects on attention and behavior. Sleep disorder indicates that sleep disorder caused by high night temperatures may be a mediator factor that explains this relationship, as previous studies have shown that sleep disorder negatively affects the performance of attention tasks. As for external behavioral problems, the study found no temperature connection. Despite theories that indicate that heat can increase aggression, recent studies have not categorically ensured these hypothesis. These results highlight the effect of climate change on the mental health of teenagers, with the urgent need for more research to understand this relationship in different climatic conditions. The study indicates the importance of developing overall health strategies aimed at reducing the negative effects of climate on mental health, especially with the increasing rate of climate change worldwide.