Mental Health Impacts of Climate Change
Summary
Global patterns of climate change are increasingly recognised as determinants of mental health across populations. Direct effects arise from acute events—heatwaves, floods, fires and storms—which can induce trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression. Indirect pathways include chronic stress resulting from environmental degradation, livelihood disruption, displacement and social inequities. Vulnerable groups such as marginalised communities, children and older adults experience heightened risk owing to socioeconomic and infrastructural constraints. Psychological responses encompass both clinical disorders and emerging phenomena—climate anxiety, ecological grief and solastalgia—that affect emotional well-being, community cohesion and adaptive coping. Attention is now turning to how mental health services, community-based interventions and policy frameworks can integrate psychological support into climate adaptation and mitigation strategies.
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Mental Health Impacts of Climate Change publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in mental health impacts of climate change across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Climate anxiety: Persistent worry or fear regarding the impacts and uncertainties of climate change.
Eco-anxiety: Distress associated with awareness of environmental degradation and ecological threats.
Ecological grief: Mourning experienced in response to losses in ecosystems and species due to environmental change.
Solastalgia: Emotional or existential distress caused by negative changes to one’s home environment.
Pro-environmental behaviour: Actions undertaken to minimise harm to the environment and promote sustainability.
References
- Beyond climate anxiety: Development and validation of the inventory of climate emotions (ICE): A measure of multiple emotions experienced in relation to climate change. Global Environmental Change (2023).
- Climate anxiety, wellbeing and pro-environmental action: correlates of negative emotional responses to climate change in 32 countries. Journal of Environmental Psychology (2022).
- Climate Change and Mental Health: A Scoping Review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (2021).
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