The mind and the body are not separate. What affects one is bound to affect the other. Climate change provides evidence of this. Its toll on physical health — from heat-related illnesses and respiratory issues to cardiovascular diseases and waterborne infections — has been well-established. But its repercussions on mental health are less talked about. Two psychoanalysts working in the Himalayas have been researching the psychological imprint of the rapidly changing climate and the resultant disruptions in ecological and communal life. This study is different from existing lines of inquiry — studies on climate anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder from extreme weather events, for instance — because it makes important links among the clim­atic, the social, the eco­nomic and the psy­chological. One such chain reaction is clim­ate change hamper­ing flowering seasons, which then leads to poor yields and losses for fruit farmers, causing them to suffer from stress and pushing younger generations to choose alternative career paths, sundering their ties to the community and ending with a spurt in social isolation and loneliness.

Similar unseen but crucial domino effects are unfolding across the world and India. Communities facing drought in New South Wales suffer from something that psychologists and philosophers call “solastalgia” — emotional distress caused by witnessing environmental degradation in one’s home surroundings. Climate change, evidently, damages geographical identity, leading to a loss of belonging, melancholy and psychological unease. In India, the rising heat combined with humidity is increasingly causing ‘wet-bulb temperatures’. Much is said about how this affects those in the informal economy who have to work outside but it has a serious impact on the elderly, too, that generally goes unnoticed. Heat and humidity limit outdoor mobility and increase social isolation among the elderly, stretch their meagre pensions from the economic strain from energy bills, and cause chronic sleep disruption, all of which wreaks havoc on their mental health. What is most worrying is that a study published in The Lancet Planetary Health shows that mental illnesses lead to a despondency about the possibility of a better future and kill the political will to demand change from those in power.

India’s expenditure on mental health is less than 1% of its budgetary outlay and is woefully inadequate in dealing with the crisis at hand, especially since the psychological effects of climate change remain mostly undetected. This is because they do not fit neatly into crisis-response frameworks. Disaster management authorities are trained to deal with floods, cyclones, and heat waves. But they are not equipped to handle the slow psychological erosion caused by changing landscapes, livelihood insecurity, and social dislocation. Integrating psychological support into disaster response, developing training modules for front-line workers, and investing in community-based mental health services, especially in ecologically vulnerable regions, are thus imperatives. Additionally, there is an urgent need for longitudinal studies on how climate change is affecting mental health across different socio-economic and age groups. Without evidence, there will be no funding, policy intervention or institutional care.