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The feelings and hopes of young people around the world are often neglected in policymaking and research, with consequences for both their wellbeing and the effectiveness of humanity's response to the climate crisis. Many of them are distressed by climate change's impacts, the inaction of political and corporate leaders, the ways other people respond to their feelings, and the lack of support they have to share their feelings or get involved in meaningful climate-related work. This paper is written by a group of twenty-three concerned young people from fifteen countries. It provides a first-hand account of our deepest feelings, how these feelings affect our daily lives, the support we want to help us cope, and our hopes for a radically more compassionate future. The results are particularly relevant to policymakers, mental health professionals, journalists, educators, and people working with young people more widely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identity is a complex concept that can be informed by various factors, involving biological, psychological, experiential, and social influences. Specifically, one's social identity refers to the ways in which individuals can adopt attributes from established collective categories, like cultural identities, ethnic identities, gender identities, and class identities, amongst others. Social identity can encompass unique and diverse interactions at an individual level, known as micro-identities, that may be selectively expressed, hidden, or downplayed, contingent on distinct sociocultural settings. However, the formation of social identity is recurrently defined in opposition to perceptions of the Other, which can entail adverse paradigms of marginalisation, stigma, and discrimination. Although this theory of Otherness has been developed across different fields, particularly sociology, it may be important in psychiatric contexts as it can engender inherent risk factors and mental health inequalities. Consequently, this paper seeks to bring attention towards these issues, exploring the construction of Otherness and its detrimental outcomes for psychiatry, such as systemic discrimination and disparities in therapeutic support, alongside recommended initiatives to mitigate against the effects of Otherness. This may require multifactorial approaches that include cultural competency training, interventions informed by micro-identities and intersectionality, patient advocacy, and structural changes to mental health policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a social justice issue, it is suggested that racialised identity may represent a critical moderator in the association between racism and adverse mental health. We performed a meta-moderation analysis of studies on racialised identity, racism and adverse mental health in children and adolescents. We searched Pubmed, Web of Science, SocINDEX, PsychInfo, Medline, CINAHL and EBSCO Academic Search Ultimate for peer-reviewed articles published between January 2013 and December 2022. Nine studies, encompassing 2146 Black, Moroccan, Turkish, Indigenous, South Korean, Latinx and Multi-heritage children and adolescents between the ages of 7 and 16, were included, covering depressive symptoms, substance use, internalising symptoms and externalising symptoms. A random effect meta-analysis reported a medium size positive correlation of 0.26 (95% CI = 0.20–0.32) between racism and adverse mental health. A comparison between internalising and externalising symptoms revealed a smaller positive correlation of 0.25 (95% CI = 0.09–0.41) for internalising symptoms and a slightly larger positive correlation of 0.30 (95% CI = 0.19–0.41) for externalising symptoms. A small negative moderation of −0.07 (95% CI = −0.17 to 0.02) was found for racialised identity in the association between racism and internalising symptoms, whilst no moderation was found between racism and externalising symptoms. Overall, a negligible moderation of −0.02 (95% CI = −0.08–0.05) was found for racialised identity in the association of racism to adverse mental health. These findings suggest that the effect of racism on internalising symptoms is slightly stronger for children and adolescents with lower racialised identities and slightly weaker for those with higher racialised identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]