{"id":4279,"date":"2025-07-28T09:00:22","date_gmt":"2025-07-28T09:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/ighi\/?p=4279"},"modified":"2025-08-04T09:54:20","modified_gmt":"2025-08-04T09:54:20","slug":"protecting-mental-health-from-the-impacts-of-climate-change-an-imperative-for-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/ighi\/2025\/07\/28\/protecting-mental-health-from-the-impacts-of-climate-change-an-imperative-for-action\/","title":{"rendered":"Protecting mental health from the impacts of climate change: An imperative for action"},"content":{"rendered":"

Launch of a joint United for Global Mental Health & Climate Cares Centre report on mental health in national adaptation policies. This blog post was written by Alessandro Massazza, United for Global Mental Health<\/strong>, and Jessica Newberry Le Vay, Climate Cares Centre.<\/strong><\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

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A woman returns home after collecting water from a nearby river, walking across large deposits of bags put together to protect the embankment from soil erosion due to the rising Brahmaputra river during peak monsoon season in Majuli island, Assam, India. Credit: Kunga Tashi Lepcha \/ Climate Visuals Countdown<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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From increasing the risk of new mental health problems following extreme weather events to making people living with pre-existing mental health problems more vulnerable, climate change affects all aspects of people\u2019s mental health and wellbeing. The <\/span>latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)<\/span><\/a> indicates, with high confidence, that climate change has already been <\/span>negatively impacting mental health globally<\/span><\/a>, and that these impacts are expected to worsen as climate change deepens.<\/span><\/p>\n

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A number of actions can be taken to protect people and communities from the impacts of already happening climate change. These actions are collectively known as \u201cadaptation\u201d actions, which can be <\/span>defined <\/span><\/a>as the human process of adjusting to the actual or expected climate and its impacts in order to reduce harm or to benefit from opportunities. Adaptation activities can include things like building flood defences, setting up and implementing early warning systems for extreme weather events such as cyclones, or switching to drought-resistant crops. Importantly, adaptation is needed to protect mental health from climate change-related hazards, and the actions can also have significant co-benefits (i.e. additional wins) for mental health, for example the potential additional mental health benefits of increasing tree cover and green space access in cities beyond the cooling effect.<\/span><\/p>\n

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And yet, mental health often receives insufficient attention in the context of climate adaptation discussions.\u00a0 For example, according to <\/span>a 2025 World Health Organisation review of health in national adaptation plans<\/span><\/a> (59 national adaptation plans (NAPs) and 27 health national adaptation plans (HNAPs)), mental health and psychosocial considerations are included in less than half of NAPs (44%) and remain incompletely documented across HNAPs (81%). Importantly, <\/span>only 5% of NAPs and 22% of HNAPs included specific actions to address mental health and psychosocial needs, making mental health one of the health outcomes with the least actionable recommendations in the context of adaptation policies. Another <\/span>recent review<\/span><\/a> on children\u2019s health in NAPs found that of the 160 countries it examined, none included considerations on children\u2019s mental health. An <\/span>analysis of HNAPS in South America<\/span><\/a> also highlighted the minimal recognition of mental health. The lack of recognition of mental health in adaptation policies may also be driven <\/span>by the dearth of robust research<\/span><\/a> on the mental health impacts of adaptation action.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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To address this gap, <\/span>United for Global Mental Health<\/span><\/a> and the <\/span>Climate Cares Centre<\/span><\/a> at Imperial College London joined forces to develop a report that: 1) reviews the current state of mental health integration in adaptation planning, and 2) provides evidence-based recommendations and content suggestions on how policymakers working on national adaptation plans can integrate mental health in their policies. The report is launching this week in the context of the <\/span>2025 Global Climate and Health Conference<\/span><\/a> in Brasilia, Brazil. It represents a call to ensure mental health is meaningfully integrated in adaptation action at the national level and across international commitments such as the <\/span>Bel\u00e9m Health Action Plan for the Adaptation of the Health Sector to Climate Change<\/span><\/a>. You can access the full report <\/span>here<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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The report reviewed national adaptation policies from 193 countries and the main findings were:\"In<\/span><\/p>\n

Overall, mental health was not included in the majority of national adaptation policies (58%) and, when included, it was often mentioned superficially and\/or with no corresponding adaptation action. The heat map below highlights the degree of inclusion of mental health in national adaptation policies globally. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"Heat<\/p>\n

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The report also provides concrete evidence-based recommendations and suggested content for the integration of mental health into national adaptation policies. The recommendations include:<\/span><\/p>\n