Parley AIR: The climate mental health crisis
Younger generations in particular are reporting high rates of climate anxiety and depression
The climate crisis is the challenge of our lifetime and it impacts far more than the environment. A lesser discussed yet heavily felt consequence of The Existential Threat is the mental health fallout of the fear, grief, trauma and stress it inflicts upon communities everywhere. Extreme weather exasperates existing mental health issues and creates new ones. To take care of our planet, we must also take care of our emotional health.
In honor of World Mental Health Day, occurring this year in the wake of horrific hurricanes, we’re unpacking how climate change impacts mental health, both directly and indirectly, and looking at some of the proven ways experts say can help you cope. Dive into the AIR Guide below.
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Youth climate strike, New York. (Photo: Henry Garfunkle)
AFFECTING THE YOUTH
Our failure to protect the planet from a climate crisis is already causing unprecedented heat waves and turbocharging catastrophic storms. The excess of human-generated greenhouse gasses trapped in our atmosphere are slowing vital ocean currents to a level some scientists worry could drastically shift weather patterns that people living in India, Europe, South American and West Africa depend on for food. The rate of ocean warming has doubled in the last two decades. The unprecedented is the new norm.
If you feel like this is unimaginably heavy, you are not alone. Studies have shown younger generations consistently report that the pressure of the climate crisis is negatively impacting their mental health, and it’s getting worse. Google searches for “climate anxiety” soared by 565% in 2021. It’s been shown time and time again that climate-change-driven anxiety – called ‘climate anxiety,’ or ‘eco-anxiety’ – and depression disproportionately affects younger generations.
One 2021 global survey interviewed people from all over the world, from Nigeria to the United Kingdom, to India and Brazil. It revealed that more than half of people aged 16 to 25 felt sad, anxious or powerless, or had other negative emotions about climate change. Even more than that – 75% – said that they believe the future is frightening, while 83% said that they think people have failed to take care of the planet. People who had climate anxiety or reported feeling distress about the future also said they viewed government responses to the climate crisis as inadequate and that they felt betrayed.
People sit on a roof waiting to be rescued after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans. (Photo: Jocelyn Augustino / FEMA)
Extreme weather fuels mental health challenges
A huge portion of anxiety is felt over climate change as a known threat. But living through climate disasters also takes a huge toll on mental health. One study surveyed nearly 92,000 public school students in Puerto Rico between five and nine months following Hurricane Maria in 2017, a Category 5 storm that killed nearly 3,000 people on the island and left huge swaths of Puerto Rico without electricity or drinking water for months. Close to 6,400, or 7%, developed symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of the fallout. The global survey that showed nearly half of young people around the world have climate anxiety also found that in places where climate disasters have already become more intense, including the Philippines, far fewer people reported not being worried about climate change. Only 1% of Filipinos reported not being worried compared to around 9% of Americans.
Another study found that children living in Louisiana during both Hurricane Katrina and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill who had stronger symptoms of PTSD following the disasters were more likely to have substance use disorders later on. As the planet warms, such extreme weather will become the new normal.
The average 6-year-old today will likely live through about three times as many climate-change-driven disasters, including fires, crop failures, droughts and floods, as someone born in 1960. These effects can be more profound for children, who rely on routine – which is deeply disrupted by losing a home, a school, a family member, a way of life, to a climate-change-fueled natural disaster – and whose brains are still developing. But depression and anxiety following natural disasters doesn’t just impact kids. Who these events impact and to what extent varies greatly.
For example, one study found that rates of self-reported depression were about 5% of Vietnam’s population following a typhoon in 2006, and more than 80% following a 1998 hurricane in Nicaragua. The researchers believed the mental health toll a disaster takes on the humans it affects may be related to how many people were impacted. This includes through deaths of loved ones, displacement and actually enduring the disaster. People’s existing state of living and the resources they have access to also likely play a huge role. They also found that people were more likely to have psychological distress following a catastrophic storm, flood, fire or other natural disaster if they were unemployed, had pre-existing medical issues or were living in low-income households.
Heat makes mental health disorders worse
Extreme weather can also disproportionately impact people with existing mental health conditions. Summer 2023 was the hottest on record, until summer 2024 topped it. Before that, 2016 held the record and in the years between deadly heat waves hit every continent on our blue planet. Starting in April of 2024, heat waves swept across Southeast Asia, where temperatures soared high enough to close schools. In California and the U.S. Southwest, summer heatwaves have seared into October, bringing historic temperatures to places that typically see relief in autumn.
Heat waves are dangerous for everyone, but can be particularly threatening to people with mental health conditions that require them to be on certain medications linked to increased sensitivity to heat. Antipsychotic medications, including those that treat Schizophrenia, have been shown to interfere with the body’s ability to perceive heat, and therefore initiate the body’s natural cooling systems, such as sweating. Without being able to cool themselves, people who take these medications are at high risk for heat stroke.
What’s more is that in wealthier nations in particular, people living with mental health conditions are more likely to live in places that don’t have air conditioning.
Flooded village in India. (Photo: Kuntal Biswas)
Marginalized communities left out, but often suffer most
People who are BIPOC, low-income and those living in the Global South are often edged out of the ‘eco-anxiety’ discussion. At-risk communities are already suffering, while, all too often, people in the Global North discuss climate change as a still-distant issue, or even a politicized elaborate hoax.
Even within wealthy nations, BIPOC and low-income communities suffer far more at the hands of climate change. They are more likely to live on streets with little or no tree cover, which create shade on scorching days, or live in low-lying areas of cities that are more prone to flooding. Still, the conversation around climate anxiety remains largely centered around the experience of wealthy and white people.
Sarah Jaquette Ray studies and teaches on the intersection of social justice and climate emotions. She believes the language used in the climate anxiety discussion keeps it one that is mostly had by the white and privileged. That is, what climate anxiety means to a white, middle-class American likely means something different to a farmer in Vietnam. Different cultures also have different languages used to discuss emotions. Oftentimes emotions are not part of the discussion at all, even when rebuilding after a greenhouse-gas-fueled disaster. Not all societies recognize trauma.
As a result, people from the Global South, as well as BIPOC and low-income people living in wealthy nations are largely missed when we talk about climate and mental health. At the same time, the global elite have an enormously outsized carbon footprint. They’re also more likely to get a hold of resources that can lessen the impact climate change has on their lives.
Photo by Ocean Uprise ambassador Victor Bezerra
The Blue Mind Movement
Amazingly, the fact that younger generations are often disproportionately impacted by climate anxiety has not prevented huge numbers of young people from leading the climate action movement. In our previous AIR Guide to ocean heatwaves, we shared a few ways you can take action that support mental health. These include:
Making efforts, no matter how small, to nurture and protect the environment. Psychologists say being part of a solution is one of the most powerful things people can do to combat feelings of helplessness.
Joining in a community focused on climate advocacy can help people feel less alone and makes climate anxiety less debilitating.
If you live on a coast, you can organize or join a beach clean-up. If you’re inland, you can still prevent plastic pollution from entering the oceans through the world’s rivers.
Another action that can shore up wellbeing for the long-term: rest. While it’s important to stay informed and engaged, it’s equally vital to know how and when to unplug. Research has found that interacting with the oceans — or another form of water, even a shower counts — can have a significantly positive impact on mental health. In his book Blue Mind, the late marine biologist Dr. Wallace J. Nichols goes deep into the neuroscience of how being near, in, on or under water can make people happier, healthier and less anxious. The book and its theory sparked The Blue Mind Movement. There’s a reason so many of us are drawn to the beach, Nichols explains. Being near water (note: not during extreme weather) induces a calming, meditative state — the Blue Mind state. The effect can also be achieved through calming activities like reading poetry, creating art and listening to music.
Our Ocean Uprise team of youth leaders put together a toolkit with concrete actions to help you strengthen your relationship with the oceans, wherever you are in the world. No single action will erase climate change. No one method is going to quell the toll it takes on mental health. But small things do add up, and they’re worth integrating into your daily routine.
TAKE ACTION
Read up, make noise, spread the word and give others the tools to do the same. Systemic change won’t come unless we demand it.
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