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Posted March 28, 2026 Reviewed by Margaret Foley
Human-caused climate change is now affecting everyone around the world. Its health impacts are being tracked, focusing on physical health. Tracking climate change’s mental health impacts is far trickier. No long-term, global indicator has yet proven to be robust.
Physical health and mental health are inextricably linked, suggesting prospects for seeking physical health outcomes based in mental health conditions affected by human-caused climate change. The reverse can also be examined: mental health outcomes emerging from physical health impacts. One significant hurdle is ensuring attribution from a specific climate change trend through to physical health outcomes and then to mental health conditions—or vice versa.
Atlantic and Caribbean hurricanes are becoming stronger while declining in numbers due to human-caused climate change. Where wind and flood risk are not reduced prior to a hurricane, a disaster can result, with people injured and killed, their homes flattened, and lives upended. Being injured or having friends and family killed or injured, as well as disruption to life, livelihood, and home, can certainly lead to depression, anxiety, stress, and more.
The first attribution challenge is that no hurricane needs to produce a disaster. The key lies in reducing wind and flood risk before a hurricane. If people could afford to do so, and have the knowledge and impetus, then they could survive hurricanes with little damage or with swift reconstruction, ensuring few adverse health consequences. Negative mental health impacts emerging from hurricanes never ought to happen, no matter how human-caused climate change impacts these storms or other weather.
One weather-related exception might be heat-humidity. Human-caused climate change is already producing heat-humidity episodes that are beyond what humanity has experienced. Calculations are starting to show the percentage of heatwave deaths that can be attributed to human-caused climate change.
Doing the same for mental health impacts might not be too distant. There is no doubt that excess heat-humidity impairs brain function. But how much of heat’s effects on different people and within different contexts, and its possible mental health impacts, are being mapped out?
Livelihood impacts are another factor. Farmers, among others, must work outdoors. Too often, they face the choice of risking their lives in the heat and humidity or losing their income. The latter may happen anyway, as crops wilt and livestock die in the heat-humidity. Evidence remains anecdotal, but in locations experiencing untenable heat and humidity, increasing farmer suicides appear to be correlated with these weather conditions, alongside a lack of support and coping mechanisms.
Statements about correlations and causations are inevitably cautious for the moment due to a major challenge with tracking mental health outcomes: lack of consistent, robust data. Differences exist between emotional troughs and diagnosable mental health conditions. Someone might explain that they are feeling worried, stressed, or depressed while ideating suicide. It does not necessarily mean that they have a formal mental health diagnosis that requires treatment.
And no matter what the type or level of mental health condition, not everyone can investigate or redress their situation. Many lack access to mental health services, or those services are underresourced with staff who are overwhelmed and poorly trained.
Access to mental healthcare is not just about availability, including being nearby with the time to go there, but is also about affordability. Even in places with ostensibly free, universal healthcare, the individual might need to pay for prescriptions or appropriate specialist follow-up and monitoring. Free, universal healthcare typically focuses on response, waiting for an evident mental health condition to manifest, rather than supporting prevention or ongoing monitoring.
Underreporting of mental health conditions is usually presumed due to fear of being labelled and ostracised. Overreporting of mental health conditions can be from people exaggerating symptoms or being unclear about what they are experiencing, perhaps to get sick leave from work. Medical professionals might also tend toward diagnosing and prescribing, rather than taking the chance of a patient self-harming. Diagnosis names and baselines change, meaning that data are not always comparable through time.
Meanwhile, interactions remain poorly understood between (a) weather affected by climate change and (b) medications and therapies for mental health. Many connections are shown or presumed, such as heat reducing the effectiveness of specific depression medications or extreme rain triggering stress in someone who lost their home to floods. The difference between “shown” and “presumed” is not always admitted. Contexts and confounders are inevitably present.
One of the most prominent contexts and confounders for human-caused climate change is that people’s mental health can be affected by the doomerism swirling around climate change. Discussion continues as to how much eco-anxiety and climate grief are induced by negative reporting subsuming the reality about human-caused climate change’s impacts.
For one example, as with the hurricanes mentioned above, it is not straightforward that disasters must increase as climate change progresses. Without action, it will certainly be rough. The balance is how much action can be taken to avoid disasters, irrespective of the changing climate. Across all realms of climate change, much can be achieved for eco-inspiration and climate hope, which would help to allay fears without encouraging complacency or denying the real difficulties.
Perhaps tracking climate change’s mental health impacts and seeking an ideal indicator is a distraction. Instead, we already know the actions to pursue: Offer mental health services to everyone and stop human-caused climate change—and they will support each other.
References
Florido Ngu, F., I. Kelman, J. Chambers, and S. Ayeb-Karlsson. 2021. Correlating heatwaves and relative humidity with suicide (fatal intentional self-harm). Scientific Reports, vol. 11, article 22175.
Kelman, I., S. Ayeb-Karlsson, K. Rose-Clarke, A. Prost, E. Ronneberg, N. Wheeler, and N. Watts. 2021. A review of mental health and wellbeing under climate change in small island developing states (SIDS). Environmental Research Letters, vol. 16, article 033007.
Romanello, M., et al. 2025. The 2025 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: climate change action offers a lifeline. The Lancet, vol. 406, issue 10521, pp. 2804-2857.
Voyatzis-Bouillard, D. and I. Kelman. “Do Climate Change Interventions Impact the Determinants of Health for Pacific Island Peoples?” The Contemporary Pacific, vol. 33, no. 2, 466-496.
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Ilan Kelman, Ph.D., is Professor of Disasters and Health at University College London, England, and a Professor II at UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway.
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Having friends protects you in multiple ways, from slowing cellular aging to deterring bullies to bolstering your self-esteem.
Self Tests are all about you. Are you outgoing or introverted? Are you a narcissist? Does perfectionism hold you back? Find out the answers to these questions and more with Psychology Today.
