Climate Change and Mental Health Equity

Climate change is a driver of poverty, poor mental health, inequity, and increased intersectional vulnerability, with significant differential global impacts on individual and community health and well-being. For example, people living in low resource settings in high income countries (HICs) and in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) are at greater risk, often experiencing fragile socioeconomic, political and health infrastructures, and conflict-affected settings (FCAS) that place them at greater risk and vulnerabilities to climate change related mental health impacts.

The broad goal of this book is to place a social justice and inclusive lens on climate change and mental health equity focusing on these three key elements: people, place, and community. The book includes perspectives from the global North, the global South, and Indigenous perspectives to help provide greater insight into how we can better understand climate change and mental health equity across peoples, place, and community. This book’s three-pronged approach will focus on certain trends in this emerging and growing field, also bridging some of the more extensive gaps, and is a tool for better understanding how mental health disparities might be addressed at this time.