Climate Cares

Challenges affecting our planet also affect our minds, communities and healthcare systems

Download an overview of our programme for Climate Cares Visit our project website for Connecting Climate Minds

Climate Cares is a team of researchers, designers, policy-makers and educators aiming to understand and support mental health in the current climate and ecological crises. Our vision is for individuals, communities and healthcare systems to have the knowledge, tools, and resources to become resilient to the mental health impacts of climate change.

"Climate change is an underappreciated mental health emergency. This is a technical, social, and emotional issue."

Professor David Nabarro, IGHI Co-Director

Achieving our vision: our key areas of work

Evidence

Climate Cares is building a global evidence base to understand how the climate crisis, and awareness of it, can influence our mental health. We are also working to understand who is being affected, and the mutual benefits of climate action.

Read our systematic review and meta-analysis examining the relationship between ambient temperature and mental health in The Lancet Planetary Health.

Read our Delphi study in The Journal of Climate Change and Health on developing global recommendations for action on climate change and mental health across sectors.

Read our publication in The Lancet which explores how the dual crises of climate change and mental health are impacting the wellbeing of young people in the UK.

Awareness

Climate Cares is working to make the evidence base of the hidden costs of climate change on mental health and multiple benefits of climate action more accessible to a number of audiences, and equip them with the education and training which can support them to act, through:

leading Connecting Climate Minds to develop a global research agenda at the intersection of Climate Change and Mental Health,
leading the European Hub for COP², a global network of organisations generating policies and actions to strengthen our abilit to endure, innovate and adapt to the climate crisis,
highlighting opportunities for improving mental health and emotional wellbeing associated with taking actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to a warming climate, through our briefing paper.

Solutions

Together with affected individuals, Climate Cares will design, evaluate and scale evidence-based practices that support the mental health of vulnerable people and communities so they can become resilient in times of crisis. These co-designed spaces will enable people to reflect, learn effective coping strategies, connect with others, and understand their role in creating impactful action.

We're trialling a new co-designed intervention, a free 'eco-emotion' guided journal we've developed with young people to help them understand, process and respond to their emotions about the environment.

Click to find out more about the Climate Cares guided journal

Find out how Imperial researchers at the Institute of Global Health Innovation and the Grantham Institute are committed to better understanding this problem and developing appropriate responses.

There is growing evidence that climate change can have direct and indirect effects on mental health. In this video, we explore some of these impacts, and how we can develop win-win solutions to tackle them together. Find out how our team is committed to better understanding this complex relationship and creating evidence-based ways to address it.

Bringing together a range of expertise across Imperial College London

Climate Cares is a collaboration between the Institute of Global Health Innovation and the Grantham Institute – two of Imperial College London’s seven Global Challenge Institutes established to promote inter-disciplinary working and to meet some of the greatest challenges faced by society.