How Climate Change Puts Our Mental Health at Risk

There is growing consensus that climate change poses serious threats to our mental health and psychosocial well-being, including emotional distress, anxiety, depression, grief, and even suicidal behavior.

While the impact of climate change on our physical health is well documented — heat stroke, waterborne diseases, respiratory conditions — the mental health burden has been less explored. A recent report from the World Health Organization (WHO) confirms a key finding of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change : there is evidence, albeit limited, to suggest that all the major threats to physical health linked to climate change also have negative effects on mental health. We already know that the number of cases of psychological trauma arising from a disaster can be 40 times greater than the number of physical injuries.

According to the report, climate change is worsening existing inequities. The people most likely to bear the brunt of the mental health impact of climate change are those who are poor, unhoused, female, or gender nonbinary, as well as those who live in a conflict zone, belong to a marginalized race or ethnicity, or have a previous health condition.

Take the example of Wonder Muyambo, who lived in a farming community in Zimbabwe when Cyclone Idai hit in 2019:

My one-room house and other houses of my relatives were destroyed . . . . It is now very difficult for me to source money to buy food, clothes, pay school fees for my kids, and buy building materials to construct my house. I lost seven goats and 20 road runners, which were my family’s source of income and food.

As recounted in the WHO report, Muyambo and others in his community have faced months of depression, anxiety, and stress since the storm hit. Making matters worse is the paucity of mental health services and supports in their area.

You can imagine a family facing a similar situation in rural Kansas, a state that in recent years has faced more intense rainstorms and severe floods . Without access to adequate mental health services, many families and communities simply do not have access to tools and supports that can help people weather the psychological and emotional impact of such disasters.

Climate change can impact our mental health in many ways. Extreme weather conditions like heat can fuel mood and anxiety disorders and raise the risk of suicide, interpersonal violence, and aggression. When people are rendered homeless because of rising sea levels or other devastating changes to their environment, they often experience distress, a loss of belonging, control, or autonomy, or other threats to their mental and emotional well-being.

The WHO’s findings aren’t all doom and gloom, however. The authors suggest there are things governments can do now to mitigate some of these effects. One of these is to develop community-based approaches to reducing vulnerabilities to climate events. Another is to increase funding for mental health and psychosocial supports before a disaster strikes.

Some countries have already made progress in a few of these areas, the report notes. In Caribbean nations, the Caribbean Development Bank has partnered with the Pan American Health Organization to develop regional awareness around the need to build mental health preparedness capacities and reduce stigma associated with seeking mental health treatment. In the Philippines, nonspecialist health workers in the Eastern Visayas region, an area devastated by Typhoon Haiyan in 2013, received training in dealing with residents’ mental health issues.

But the WHO report is not just a wake-up call for low- and middle-income countries. Consider the United States, a nation in the throes of a mental health crisis, where rates of anxiety, depression, and other behavioral health issues are sky-high , especially among young people. Efforts to strengthen mental health care there are slow to keep pace with growing needs triggered by gun violence, feelings of isolation, and social media pressures, as well as climate change.

Of course, climate change is something that the world must also tackle upstream: telling people to go to therapy while we continue to destroy the planet just isn’t going to cut it. An immediate and coordinated global response to the dual crises of climate change and mental health is critical to the well-being of future generations. Our challenge now is to act on that knowledge in both the private and public spheres.