Climate change is likely to affect mental health in several ways. Climate change is associated with increasingly frequent and severe weather events, which cause extensive infrastructure damage, economic slowdown, and interruptions of medical and psychiatric care. These events, and the lifestyle changes that can result, are associated with increased mental health burdens.

Climate change is already causing a range of mental health impacts.

Climate change is already causing a range of mental health impacts.

Extreme weather events cause relocation and displacement and rupture people’s relationships with place. Other effects of climate change, including sea-level rise and other ecological changes, will also cause displacement and undermine longstanding human relationships with supporting local ecosystems.

From the loss of life, dislocation, infrastructure loss, and interruption of medical care, extreme weather events such as severe hurricanes can be associated with increases in depression, grief and post-traumatic stress disorder. Relocation and displacement can also have significant mental health effects, and are independently associated with major depression as well.

On another level, the magnitude of the climate crisis, and worry over future effects on health and the environment, have already generated concern in some parts of the general population. The degree of this health burden relative to other strains on mental health is unknown, but points to the necessity for effective public health communication that inspires action rather than stress and despair.

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