The weather inside us
Germán Andrés Alarcón Garavito has this view on the intersection of the climate crisis and mental health
Our summary is if you think the climate crisis is an external storm. Something to brace for, to resist, to solve. Maybe consider it more as an internal weather system—an encroaching fog that seeps into the mind, a rising tide of anxiety that won’t recede with the headlines.
We think we should start a conversation, and you can use the comments section below .
We don’t talk enough about this interior climate crisis. About how the same forces reshaping our environment are reshaping our psyches. The evidence is mounting: climate change is not only flooding coastlines and scorching fields—it’s flooding us.
Germán Andrés Alarcón Garavito has this view on the interaction of the climate crisis and mental health
"The Impact of Climate Change on the Mental Health of Populations at Disproportionate Risk of Health Impacts and Inequities: A Rapid Scoping Review of Reviews," published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health in 2024. Germán Andrés Alarcón Garavito at University College London lays bare just how deep the emotional and psychological toll of climate change runs.
The study maps out the direct and indirect impacts of climate change on mental health, especially among those already most at risk: Indigenous peoples, children in low- and middle-income countries, people with disabilities, and communities in rural or impoverished regions. The common thread? These populations are not only on the frontlines of climate disaster, but often left out of the mental health response.
Consider the Saami people of northern Scandinavia. Their ancestral knowledge, deeply tied to ice, reindeer, and seasonal rhythm, is under siege from warming winters. As ice thaws unpredictably, it’s not just tradition that falters—it’s identity, and with it, mental stability. Or think of children in flood-prone regions of South Asia, whose schooling is repeatedly interrupted, whose homes are lost, and whose futures are darkened before they begin. These aren't isolated crises. They’re systemic, generational, and largely invisible to the carbon accounting metrics we obsess over.
It’s easy to focus on the spectacular—the hurricanes, wildfires, heatwaves that make headlines. But it’s the slow violence of climate change that’s harder to trace and arguably more corrosive to the soul. Chronic drought, loss of biodiversity, soil degradation—these aren’t cinematic, but they quietly erode people’s livelihoods, social cohesion, and hope.
And then there’s the creeping dread many of us carry. Eco-anxiety, once dismissed as niche or neurotic, is now a recognisable psychological state, especially among the young. It's not pathological to fear the future when that fear is evidence-based. But here’s the rub: our clinical frameworks aren’t built to hold this kind of anguish. Western diagnostic models often ignore the cultural and communal dimensions of trauma—especially when it comes to Indigenous knowledge or rural realities. As the researchers point out, even the mental health scales used in climate studies need to be decolonised and contextually adapted.
The report doesn't extend to prescribing interventions but it does give examples of actions. One powerful example comes from Seychelles, where young people are invited into climate policymaking—not just as victims, but as visionaries. This isn’t therapy. It’s agency. And agency, it turns out, might be the strongest antidote to climate grief.
Because we are not separate from the climate. We are climate. Our bodies breathe it, our economies burn it, and our minds absorb it. What changes out there changes in here. There's a strong argument that we need more mental health support that doesn’t treat the climate crisis as external but as the background condition of our age.
The climate emergency is a mental health emergency. Have your say below.
Germán Andrés Alarcón Garavito
