On May 1, the Trump administration announced that it would cut $1 billion in Department of Education funding for school mental health grants. For an administration that spent its first 100 days mocking its own stated goal of “making America healthy again” by attacking public health research and critical environmental protections at every turn, the announcement was a fitting start to Mental Health Awareness Month.
As a mother, I’m deeply worried about what cuts to school mental health services will mean for families like mine—families navigating significant youth mental health challenges in a time when it’s extremely difficult to access mental health services (good luck finding a child therapist who doesn’t have a waitlist), and in a time when social, political, and environmental pressures are increasing young people’s distress. Cuts to school mental health services are just the tip of the melting iceberg: the administration’s attacks on climate action and resilience efforts will heighten mental health harms for young people for generations to come, in ways we are only beginning to understand. I’m deeply worried about this too. There’s no path to “making America healthy again” if we cannot provide young people with the critical support and healthy environment they need to thrive.
Tell Administrator Zeldin: Cutting Climate Pollution Is One of EPA’s Most Important Jobs
Schools play a vital role in supporting students through a wide range of mental health challenges, and the Trump administration’s grant cuts sabotage efforts meant to address a nationwide shortage of school counselors. The youth mental health crisis is multifaceted to be sure: loneliness, social media, mass violence, and other complex social issues all play a role. But increasingly, so do climate change and extreme weather—and when young people are exposed to disasters like hurricanes, flooding, and wildfires, they are particularly at risk of experiencing adverse mental health effects like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, and depression.
In their new book Students, Schools, and Our Climate Moment, Laura Schifter and Jonathan Klein write about schools’ essential role in building students’ resilience in the wake of climate disasters: “Schools can provide supportive mental health services for students before, during, and after extreme weather events… [They] are integral to a support system for young people.”
The students and teachers behind Schools for Climate Action agree. In 2023, they launched a student-written resolution to Congress asking for greater resources for schools in the wake of climate-related disasters as an essential component of addressing youth mental health in a changing climate. On behalf of Moms Clean Air Force, I spent a day walking around the halls of Congress with the students who’d written the resolution after their community suffered a devastating wildfire. I’ll never forget their stories or how passionately they advocated for mental health resources in their communities. I’ll also never shake the feeling that they shouldn’t have had to be their own advocates in that way: young people shouldn’t have to beg the government for adequate mental health funding for their schools.
Young people also shouldn’t be worried about the future habitability of the planet, but they are. A recent survey of over 15,000 young people aged 16-25 across the U.S. found that 85% are at least moderately worried about climate change, with 60% reporting that they’re very or extremely worried. Climate psychology researchers have suggested that the most troubling aspect of climate change for young people today isn’t climate impacts themselves, but the fact that governments are utterly failing to act in ways that will protect them: “Failure of governments to protect [young people] from harm from climate change could be argued to be a failure of human rights and a failure of ethical responsibility to care,” a landmark 2021 paper noted, “leading to moral injury (the distressing psychological aftermath experienced when one perpetrates or witnesses actions that violate moral or core beliefs).”
There is little doubt that the Trump administration’s ruthless attacks on climate action will harm the mental health of young people who are worried about the future. In the past three months alone, new EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has launched all-out war on his agency’s efforts to address climate change, most notably threatening to overturn the Endangerment Finding, the legal and scientific foundation of EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas pollution. The administration is also jeopardizing our ability to keep families safe from the immediate threats of extreme weather with drastic, reckless cuts to FEMA (no more Building Resilient Communities), the National Weather Service (hello, less accurate weather reports), and NIH (good-bye, climate and health research), just for starters.
I’m doing my very best to support my children’s mental health, and my heart goes out to every parent who is supporting a struggling young person. Anyone who has watched their child wrestle with mental health challenges knows the World Health Organization is absolutely correct when they say “there is no health without mental health.” Yet I also know that as an individual parent, I can’t possibly give my children everything they’ll need to thrive. Our children’s mental well-being also depends on the support of our schools, our communities, and our governments—more so in a time of escalating climate threats.
I’d love to see young people’s mental health improve again in the U.S. But I fear the Trump administration’s actions are sending us in exactly the wrong direction.
Tell Administrator Zeldin: Cutting Climate Pollution Is One of EPA’s Most Important Jobs