The range of ad verse mental health effects r esulting from climate change include triggering or exacerbating anxiety \, depression\, grief\, and suicide. Natural phenomena from heatwaves and droughts to floods and fires that are fueled by climate change cause trauma\, distress\, and other men tal health conditions. So can chronic\, slow-onset effects of global warmin g\, such as wat er and food insecurity\, community breakdown\, and conflict. Members of marginalized groups\, especially Indigenous peoples\, feel these effects in unique and especially acute ways . Meanwhile\, research documenting varied and far-reaching mental health harms caused by climate change continues to mount.
Climate change’s adverse mental health effects are ta king a disproportionate toll on the world’s nearly 1 billion people with pre-existing mental healt h conditions\, or psychosocial disabilities. Rising temperatures\, for example\, carry pronounced risks for persons with psychosocial disa bilities who rely on medications that affect the body’s response to hea t. Other persons with psychosocial disabilities have difficulty accessing t he services they need to cope with the mental health effects of climate cha nge. This is especially true for people with psychosocial disabilities livi ng in low- and middle-income countries\, where few people (only 1 in 27 according to one survey) ca n access the mental health services they need. While researchers work to de velop global m ental-health indicators that can be linked to weather and climate data\ , governmental and intergovernmental agencies are racing to address this critical and widening gap.
On May 8\, from 12:15 to 1 :30 p.m. U.S. Eastern\, the Harvard Law School Project on Dis ability (HPOD)\, together with the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy\, Biotechnology\, and Bi oethics\, and the GlobalMentalHealth@Harvard Initiative\, will ho st an online\, interdisciplinary panel of experts who will explore the pote ntially devastating interplay between climate change and psychosocial disab ilities\, take stock of both the current state of research on this interpla y as well as the efficacy of private and public interventions at this criti cal intersection\, and point to the roles that key stakeholders must play t o prevent the ongoing mental health crisis in many parts of the world from being supercharged by the global climate emergency.
Live CART transcription will be provided.
CATEGORIES:Discussion,Speaker/Panel LOCATION:Zoom GEO:40.712728;-74.006015 ORGANIZER;CN="Lisa Gorelik":MAILTO:lgorelik@law.harvard.edu URL;VALUE=URI:https://hls.harvard.edu/events/mental-health-and-climate-chan ge-when-a-global-crisis-and-planetary-emergency-collide/ ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://hls.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Mental-Health-and-Climate-Change-Poster-1207-x-793-px-1.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/New_York BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 DTSTART:20250309T070000 TZNAME:EDT END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR