Mental health impacts of environmental exposures: A scoping review of evaluative instruments

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. Future work is needed to define the most appropriate choice and application of assessment tools to evaluate adverse mental health impacts from environmental exposures. This will support a more universal, coordinated and cross-jurisdiction approach for the assessment, quantification and targeted response to addressing mental health impacts arising from environmental exposures.

Keywords: Environmental exposure; Mental health; Pollution; Psychological impact; Scoping Model of Systematic Review (PRISMA-ScR).