Mental health impacts of environmental exposures: A scoping review of evaluative instruments
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Date
2024
Authors
Baker, E.
Barlow, C.F.
Daniel, L.
Morey, C.
Bentley, R.
Taylor, M.P.
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Journal article
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Science of the Total Environment, 2024; 912(169063):169063-1-169063-9
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Emma Baker, Cynthia Faye Barlow, Lyrian Daniel, Claire Morey, Rebecca Bentley, Mark Patrick Taylor
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Abstract
To date, much of the health focus of environmental policy has been on preventing physical health impacts of environmental exposures. Recent research has however highlighted increasingly concurrent mental health effects and its consideration is an emerging requirement for many governments and their agencies, yet there are limited universal mental health assessment tools for environmental exposures. This paper details the findings of a scoping review that evaluated assessment tools used to measure psychological impacts from environmental exposures and pollution, as reported in recent peer-reviewed literature (2000− 2022). Across the 126 papers identified in our review, a wide range of tools to assess mental health impact were identified. We document a clear recent upswing of research interest in the mental and psychological impacts of environmental exposures, and an overarching concern for air pollution from industry, traffic, and fires. A majority of studies utilised standardised assessment instruments, but there was little consistency in the way that these were combined or deployed. The dominant mental health outcomes of interest in these studies were depression, anxiety, and mental and psychiatric health. The findings of the review identify a need and opportunity to develop a best-practice approach to consistently assess the mental health impacts arising from environmental exposures.
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© 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/bync-nd/4.0/).