The climate crisis has long been framed through images of melting glaciers, rising seas, and devastating floods. Yet beneath these visible impacts lies an often-overlooked toll—the relentless erosion of mental health. In the Global South, home to a majority of the world’s climate-exposed populations and the least-equipped health systems, climate change is increasingly recognised as a catalyst for psychological distress – ranging from acute trauma to chronic anxiety. The scale of this crisis demands urgent attention, integrated policy responses, and equitable global cooperation.
Disasters and distress
Disasters driven or intensified by climate change—cyclones, floods, droughts, and heatwaves—do not end when the skies clear or waters recede. They leave behind deep psychological scars manifesting as anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and prolonged grief.
According to the 2025 Global Report on Internal Displacement brought out by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Committee (IDMC), a record 83.4 million people were living as internally displacedpersons (IDPs) globally by the end of 2024, with most displacements triggered by climate-induced events. In 2024, South Asia alone witnessed 9.2 million internal displacements—nearly three times the previous year—fracturing communities and uprooting social networks essential for recovery and mental well-being.
These displacements are more than geographical shifts—they represent ruptures of identity and stability. Forced relocations involve the loss of homes, jobs, education, and social support, often leading to untreated psychological trauma that further deepen poverty and marginalisation. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report (IPCC AR6, 2022) noted that climate hazards already harm mental health and serve as a growing driver of involuntary migration. This dynamic is evident in flood-affected regions of East Africa, cyclone-prone Bay of Bengal coasts, and drought-stricken interiors where water scarcity gnaws at the very foundations of dignity.
Vulnerable livelihoods
Heatwaves are rapidly becoming the new normal. According to India’s 2024 Lancet Countdown report, heat exposure in 2023 resulted in the loss of 181 billion potential labour hours, translating into an estimated income loss of $141 billion—with more than half of this borne by agricultural workers.
For many informal and outdoor workers who cannot afford to stop working, heat exposure means exhaustion, reduced wages, and heightened stress—all precursors to anxiety and depression. Agrarian distress compounds this reality. A 2017 landmark econometric analysis published in PNAS attributed approximately 59,300 suicides in India over three decades to warming during growing seasons, linking crop failure, debt-driven despair, and rising temperatures into a lethal psychosocial cocktail.
Meta-analyses project that climate change could cause up to 143 million climate-induced displacements by 2050 in the Global South. Each 1°C increase in average temperature is associated with greater admissions for mental disorders, alongside higher rates of suicide, grief, anxiety, and depression. These effects multiply in fragile communities, lowering resilience and amplifying poverty traps.
Eco-Anxiety
The term ‘eco-anxiety’ once described the concerns of a fringe minority but has now become a pervasive marker of psychological distress among youth worldwide. The largest cross-national survey of young people (10,000 respondents aged 16–25 across ten countries) found that 59% were “very” or “extremely” worried about climate change, and 45% reported significant negative impacts on daily functioning—including disrupted sleep, loss of appetite, and difficulty concentrating.
Recent global meta-analyses and multi-country surveys consistently show 59–80% of young people in the Global South (e.g., India, Brazil, Nigeria) are “very or extremely worried.” However, these figures may understate the burden among low-income and rural youth, as global surveys tend to favour internet-connected, English-literate respondents. This leaves out the so-called “bottom billion”—those most vulnerable yet least likely to be measured.
A news feature published in Nature (2024) cautions that climate anxiety is more acute in many countries of the Global South, where young people face severe climate exposure coupled with limited political agency and weak institutional responses. Far from being a pathological disorder, eco-anxiety reflects the moral clarity and justified worry of those witnessing planetary decline and governmental inaction. Still, global surveys underrepresent distress among less-connected, lower-income youth, a gap emphasised by a Frontiers in Psychiatry (2025) study.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has acknowledged these links and urges governments to integrate climate considerations into mental health programmes, embed psychosocial support within climate action, invest in community-based resilience, and close yawning funding gaps. Yet, implementation remains sparse in precisely those regions where need is greatest.
Global South’s vulnerability
The psychological burden of climate change is shaped by three overlapping structural realities:
Hazard exposure and livelihood dependence – populations in South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and small island states face frequent floods, cyclones, and heatwaves while relying heavily on climate-sensitive livelihoods such as agriculture and informal outdoor labour. When hazards strike, this affect both homes and incomes.
Displacement without durable solutions – Repeated climate shocks trigger waves of internal displacement that stretch over months or years. Without stable housing, schooling, or jobs, stress accumulates and care becomes increasingly difficult to access.
Weak mental health systems – Many countries, including India, face severe human-resource gaps. Assessments suggest India has only 0.3–0.75 psychiatrists per 100,000 people—far below global standards—with even fewer psychologists and psychiatric social workers. Budgets remain modest: direct central allocations for mental health hover near 1% of the health budget, though the National Tele-Mental Health Programme has seen incremental growth. Shortfalls are starker in rural districts, which also face the greatest climate risks.
This double bind—high exposure and weak services—intensifies psychological harm and fuels cycles of untreated distress.
Mental health blind spot
Despite mounting evidence, mental health remains peripheral in most climate adaptation frameworks. India’s flagship schemes—the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC), State Action Plans, and Heat Action Plans—typically focus on mortality and infrastructure resilience, sidelining mental health. Disaster management often prioritises housing and compensation, leaving psychosocial support to underfunded NGOs or limited tele-health initiatives.
Climate finance reflects this neglect. Adaptation funds rarely earmark resources for mental health, treating psychosocial harms as intangible co-benefits rather than urgent priorities. This invisibility obscures the true economic and social costs, including lost productivity, school dropouts, and rising health burdens.
Moreover, data systems seldom capture climate-linked mental health outcomes, hindering programme design, evaluation, and accountability. Weak cross-sectoral coordination among disaster management, health, social protection, and labour sectors further fragments responses.
Policy recommendations
Embed mental health in all climate and disaster frameworks – Mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) should be core components of nationally determined contributions (NDCs), State Climate Action Plans, and Heat Action Plans, with explicit objectives, staffing standards, and referral pathways. Metrics such as screening rates, time to psychosocial contact, and continuity of care can guide effectiveness.
Build climate-smart primary care and task-sharing models – Train community health workers (ASHAs, ANMs, lay counsellors) to deliver culturally sensitive psychological first aid. WHO’s mhGAP (mental health Gap Action Programme) framework provides evidence for the cost-effectiveness of task-sharing in low-resource settings.
Climate-proof social protection and livelihoods – Expand crop insurance, drought- and heat-indexed employment schemes, and rapid cash transfers. Financial security is itself a mental health intervention, buffering distress linked to shocks and debt.
Scale and localise tele-mental health services – India’s Tele-MANAS programme shows promise but needs vernacular staffing, low-bandwidth options, formal district linkages, and privacy safeguards to support disaster survivors effectively.
Recognise eco-anxiety as civic engagement – Schools and universities should validate climate worry, teach coping and community action skills, and link mental health support with youth-led environmental initiatives. Anxiety can fuel constructive agency if positively channelled.
Integrate mental health indicators in research and surveillance – Develop validated modules for national surveys and disaster assessments, and fund longitudinal studies in climate hotspots to understand chronic harms.
Finance mental health adaptation through climate funds – Global South negotiators should push for explicit inclusion of MHPSS in loss and damage funding and adaptation proposals, ensuring mental health costs are recognised and budgeted for.
Design dignified relocation with psychosocial continuity – Planned relocations should safeguard social networks, maintain continuity of documents and medications, and provide long-term counselling, acknowledging that uncertainty often inflicts greater harm than relocation itself.
Moral, policy imperative
Climate change represents a profound injustice. Those least responsible for emissions—farmers, coastal and indigenous peoples, informal workers, and youth in the Global South—bear the heaviest psychological and material burdens. Recognising mental health as core climate infrastructure is not a luxury but a necessity. Policy must follow science by planning, funding, measuring, and delivering care for minds alongside physical infrastructure.
The mental health crisis of a warming world is no side-story; it is central to resilience. A child fearful after floods, a farmer in debt contemplating suicide, a youth paralysed by climate despair—these are public wounds demanding public solutions. Integrating mental health fully and equitably into climate action will save lives, restore dignity, and help communities not only survive but thrive in an uncertain future.
(Dr. Sudheer Kumar Shukla is an environmental scientist and sustainability expert. He currently serves as head-think tank at Mobius Foundation, New Delhi. sudheerkrshukla@gmail.com)
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