Staying sane in a crazy warming world

How to maintain your mental health despite climate change and other crises

Climate change is melting glaciers, raising sea levels, making our cities hotter, and affecting our planet in dozens of other ways. It is also affecting human health, including our mental health. Studies have shown the increase in erratic weather can increase stress, anxiety, depression, violence, and even suicide.

Young people are more susceptible to feeling bad about climate change. Almost every teen in the U.S. is worried. In a 2022 Harris Poll of 1,500 teenagers in the U.S., 89 percent said they regularly think about the environment; while 69 percent said they were afraid they and their families would soon be affected by climate change. And 82 percent expected to make key life decisions, such as where to live and whether to have children, based on environmental factors. That same year, a similar youth survey in Australia found that 67 percent of the country’s young people were concerned about climate change, with 26 percent being very or extremely concerned.

Dr Deborah Vinall

, author of Gaslighting: A Step-by-Step Recovery Guide to Heal from Emotional Abuse and Build Healthy Relationships and a writer who publishes the Substack Mental Health Musings, has noticed age plays a factor in how climate change affects an individual’s mental health. “In my clinical practice, I find young adults particularly prone to anxiety as they watch policy decisions move away from preservation and toward overuse, overconsumption, and neglect of the environment,” she says. “Those who will live longest and be most impacted by the impacts of environmental disaster are, naturally, more alarmed.”

Of all the studies on climate and mental health, the most commonly examined factor was, you guessed it, heat, along with humidity and rainfall. Most of the studies found that poor mental health was associated with increases in temperature. One study in Australia that looked at children from ages six through eleven found boys reduced their participation in organized physical activities when the average daily maximum temperatures were hotter, leading to worsening mental health for the boys. (Girls did not have the same problem.)

People whose livelihoods are connected to the environment are more worried than most people. Changes brought about by climate change—increased cyclones and flooding—are causing alarm among farmers in India. In 2020, a research team surveyed 125 Montana farmers. More than 70 percent said climate change was affecting their business and most said they were moderately to very anxious about the situation.

For American Indians and other folks native to their regions, climate change disrupts their connection to their ancestral lands and damages their cultural continuity. The disorder global heating brings to their environments also increases their food insecurity. Anxiety, sadness, and depression also afflict these individuals as climate change forces them to relocate to unfamiliar places away from their ancestral lands.

Women are more likely to experience gender-based violence that increases with a warming world. Climate-exacerbated weather can worsen mental health for folks who have chronic or more severe challenges, such as schizophrenia. Vinall says, “Additionally, neurodivergent clients, who tend to make rapid and multiple connections between data points and thus see logical outcomes more quickly than many, are frequently overwhelmed by environment anxiety.”

Studies in Thailand, Bangladesh, and India found that adults suffer from living and working as the climate warms. In Bangladesh, climate change increased the possibility of drug and alcohol use, increased family stress, amplified previous traumas, and increased thoughts of suicide.

Africa has contributed the least to the anthropogenic buildup of greenhouse gases, yet the continent is bearing the brunt of the effects of climate change, and thus greater mental health challenges now and in the coming decades. Similar scenarios are playing out in larger portions of Asia.

Staying sane

We’ve been driving ourselves crazy with global warming for decades. More recently, researchers and health professionals have been looking into how best to alleviate this additional suffering.

A study published last year in the journal Sustainability surveyed Australians about their mental and emotional responses to climate change. Most of the respondents said they felt anxiety, distress, depression, and sadness. They also said they often felt scared and overwhelmed. Some related feelings of grief and guilt because of global warming. Solastalgia was a recurring theme, many saying they felt sad as they watched changes in the plants and animals they observed through the years.

Most of those emotionally affected by climate change were taking care of their mental health on their own. Almost three-quarters of those surveyed said that they felt better if they became informed about climate problems and solutions. Sixty-six percent said they felt better if they viewed or visited natural environments. And almost as many, 63 percent, said changing their lifestyles to be more sustainable made them feel better.

A quarter of the study subjects said they improved their overall mood by participating in debates or protests, influencing policy, or “working with others on climate issues.” Few sought the professional help of a therapist or health professional, only 17 percent.

Vinall thinks the nature of the problem of climate change makes it a difficult mental health challenge. “This anxiety does not have an easy solution, being, as we say, ‘ecologically valid.’ That is, it is based in reality, not delusion,” she says. “Rather than medications or cognitive restructuring, those suffering from environment-related anxiety are best served by a combination of radical acceptance (letting go of what we cannot affect), careful decision-making on information consumption, and engaged activism where they may have influence to drive out hopelessness and despair with empowerment toward preservation and change.”

Have you or your colleagues encountered mental health concerns related to climate change? Share your experience in a comment if you feel comfortable doing so.