Mental Health and Climate Change: When a Global Crisis and Planetary Emergency Collide
The range of adverse mental health effects resulting from climate change include triggering or exacerbating anxiety, depression, grief, and suicide. Natural phenomena from heatwaves and droughts to floods and fires that are fueled by climate change cause trauma, distress, and other mental health conditions. So can chronic, slow-onset effects of global warming, such as water and food insecurity, community breakdown, and conflict. Members of marginalized groups, especially Indigenous peoples, feel these effects in unique and especially acute ways. Meanwhile, research documenting varied and far-reaching mental health harms caused by climate change continues to mount.
Photo courtesy of Megapixl.
Source: Harvard Law School (link opens in a new window)
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- Environment, Health Care
