Crisis support-seeking behavior and temperature in the United States: Is there an association in young adults and adolescents?

Abstract Background Mounting evidence demonstrates the relationship between high temperatures and adverse mental health outcomes. Yet, no study has examined the influence of temperature on crisis support-seeking behavior among youth in large urban areas. Methods Crisis Text Line (CTL) is a text messaging service that provides crisis interventions for support-seeking individuals for a range of mental-health outcomes in the United States. We applied a distributed lag non-linear modeling technique to assess the short-term impacts of daily maximum and minimum temperature on crisis-related events in four metropolitan locations in the USA. Results There were multiple positive associations in three of the four study locations that demonstrate crisis help-seeking behavior increased during anomalously warm conditions. Conclusions This study suggests that there is a significant association between high minimum or maximum temperatures and crisis help-seeking behaviors in young adults and adolescents in urban areas in the United States.