In the hottest months of 2024, a year in which Mexico and the world reached record temperatures, Yanine Quiroz began to feel a fatigue and anguish that prevented her from working during the day. “I was very afraid to see the water shortage and how all my family and friends were suffering,” says the 33-year-old journalist from Ecatepec, one of the most drought-stricken municipalities in the State of Mexico. The state is near the capital, where last year there were fears of a looming “day zero” – the point at which critically low levels might leave residents without water.
Studies have confirmed that prolonged exposure to heat affects physical and mental health, increasing the risk of exhaustion, heat stroke, mood disorders, anxiety, and even suicidal thoughts.
In Quiroz’s case, weather-related concerns were compounded by an episode of acute anxiety she was already suffering from, and she began to have panic attacks, which led her to apply for a period of leave from her job. She also sought professional help, which has helped her to talk more openly about her mental health.
The responses to environmental challenges that Quiroz describes suggest signs of what has been termed “eco-anxiety”: a state of agitation, restlessness or unease of mood in the face of the climate crisis and other environmental issues.
Though not yet formally recognised as a medical condition, this concept, popularised by the American Psychological Association (APA) in its 2017 report, “Mental Health and Our Changing Climate”, refers to the emotional distress and discomfort a person experiences due to concerns about the state of the environment and climate disasters.
It is a feeling that has been observed as mainly affecting the younger generation and those working on environmental issues. A 2021 study published in The Lancet medical journal found that more than half of 10,000 respondents, all aged between 16 to 25 and from ten different countries, experienced negative emotions such as anxiety and powerlessness in the face of climate change.
With the world facing more powerful and frequent disasters, and more erratic weather threatening communities with droughts, floods and heat waves, there is an urgent need for health professionals to understand the impact of climate change on mental health, says Ana Laura Torlaschi, an advisor on health and climate change projects for the Pan American Health Organization.
“You can have a deep knowledge about diseases, but if you don’t recognise that a person is exposed to environmental factors that affect them, you won’t be able to offer the right help,” she says.
Mental health and climate disasters
Studies have shown that people who experience a natural disaster first-hand are likely to suffer acute impacts on their mental health. That was the case for Diana Ruiz, 35, and her mother, who were caught underprepared for the arrival of Hurricane Otis in 2023, the worst storm to hit the Mexican Pacific in more than three decades, which devastated the tourist resort of Acapulco.
Otis took only 12 hours to go from tropical storm to a category five hurricane, the highest possible, and an unprecedented escalation. Faced with a rapidly strengthening cyclone, mother and daughter were unable to evacuate, and had no choice but to lock themselves in the bathroom of their Acapulco home with their cat to wait for the storm to pass.
“It was a shock. We were scared. We tried to sleep, but there was a very strange noise from the wind,” recalls Diana. In the morning, they emerged unharmed, but were left to take stock of the aftermath: their house was heavily damaged, and they had also lost the shop where they sold accessories and clothes.
In the following weeks, the challenge was to get food and prevent burglars from entering their house, as looting became prevalent in the storm’s aftermath. “My mother endured a lot of things, pain. But we didn’t cry,” the daughter recalls. “Some time later, things start to drop on you, and [you realise] how they happened.”
After the hurricane, psychologists from international NGO Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and the State of Guerrero arrived in Acapulco and Coyuca de Benítez, two of the most affected municipalities, to attend to people’s mental health. MSF has since the 1990s implemented mental health interventions as part of its emergency work.
“We arrived in what is considered the immediate post-disaster phase,” says Berzaida López, a psychologist who oversaw MSF’s mental health intervention after Otis. She explains that at this stage, a sense of disbelief prevails, and those affected feel as if they are living a nightmare.
“Stress is very high in those early days. People talk about difficulty sleeping, being startled, or being on constant vigilance,” says Lopez. “If there was a strong wind that made noises associated with the hurricane, people would experience the trauma again,” she adds. These flashbacks – reliving the hurricane – are signs of acute stress.
The importance given to mental health in relation to disasters, and that dedicated professionals exist to care for people in these situations, is a relatively new development. In 2011, after a devastating earthquake in Sendai, Japan, killed more than 18,000 people and was observed to have left survivors with acute mental health problems, the United Nations’ Sendai Framework for Risk Reduction was created, recommending improved recovery plans and psychosocial support for those affected.
Although still emergent, especially in Latin America, evidence that these events can raise risks of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse and suicidal behaviour highlights the importance of such plans.
More than two years after Otis, mental health is still a challenge for Diana and her mother. She experiences long-term health impacts from the dengue fever she contracted after Otis – an illness that spiked in the area after the disaster, inflicting a further blow to the local economy and adding to the factors that ultimately prompted Diana to move to Mexico City.
Beyond disaster: the pain of losing the landscape
For many of Latin America’s Indigenous peoples, whose traditions, cultures and often livelihoods are founded on close relations to their environments, eco-anxiety may also be a response to a changing landscape and climate.
Regeane Oliveira Suares is a young Terena woman who left her community in Nioaque, in the southwestern Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul, more than five years ago to study medicine in the state capital of Campo Grande. She describes how her mental health has been affected by both the uprooting and the gradual loss of her territory since.
“I came from a small township where everyone knew each other and the routine was different. When I started living in the city, my mental health suffered a lot. I started to develop depression and anxiety,” she says. Suares recalls how, in her village, everything gave her a sense of freedom, such as being able to walk outside or ride a bike more safely.
But if leaving her community was a challenge, it was also difficult to return and see that the land and landscape had changed, she says: “I noticed drastic changes in the crops; the lack of rain impoverished the soil and the strong sun killed most of what was being grown for food or sale.” The river was getting drier and drier, and often even diverted, creating a landscape she describes as “sad”.
Both Mato Grosso and its southern neighbour, Mato Grosso do Sul, are among the most significant agricultural states in Brazil for products such as grains, sugarcane, livestock and soybeans. But in recent decades, this position has also led the states to be ranked among the top ten for deforestation – vast swathes of this being illegal – which has brought changes to landscapes and caused other impacts on ecosystems.
In recent years, some areas in these states, and yields of some crops, have also felt the effects of extreme weather, including droughts driven by the La Niña weather pattern.
Oliveira’s feelings of uprootedness and sense of loss over the changes in her home may be an expression of what philosopher Glenn Albrecht christened in 2005 as “solastalgia”: “a pain experienced when one recognises that the place in which one resides and loves is under assault”.
It is a kind of mourning for the loss of a familiar place, and a phenomenon that various studies, including research by Albrecht, have sought to explore further.
“I think my children may not see what I was part of, where I grew up. This depresses me even more because, little by little, I saw that place crumbling before our eyes,” Oliveira says.
In 2021, Oliveira participated in research at the State University of Mato Grosso do Sul’s School of Medicine – the institution where she is studying – that sought to explore what actions are needed to improve the mental health of Indigenous people in relation to climate change.
“These people are losing their perspective on life, on hope – so, for them, everything that happens has a deeper meaning,” says Antonio Grande, the professor leading the research, on a video call. “At this point, it’s all about climate change. The land has been devastated and [the people] can no longer communicate with nature. Some even talk about not being able to hear it anymore.”
Studies and international organisations, including the United Nations and Pan-American Health Organization, have highlighted increasing rates of mental health problems in Indigenous communities worldwide, often connected to their dispossession and environmental change.
These people are losing their perspective on life, on hope […] At this point, it’s all about climate change
Antonio Grande, professor at the State University of Mato Grosso do Sul’s School of Medicine
Grande and his team’s research proposes preserving Indigenous territories, respecting Indigenous peoples’ ways of life and breaking taboos on mental illness that they found exists in these communities. “It’s something political, which starts with not destroying their land,” says Grande.
The study he leads is one of the few on mental health and climate change that has been conducted in Latin America, and provides clues to the transformation that the region needs to begin to address an issue that has been historically stigmatised.
Oliveira offers her perceptions as an Indigenous woman who is about to graduate and become a doctor. Medical schools, she says, need to work on this relationship between Indigenous mental health and climate change, but addressing the root causes of the factors that drive anxieties and puts pressure on communities is the key.
“Governments need to guarantee the right to ancestral land and financial assistance, and schools need to educate about our origins, our rights, and our values as human beings in society,” she says.
Action: a pathway to mental health work
With the frequency and intensity of extreme weather projected to increase in a warming world, more people are likely to have their mental health affected. Nora Leal Marchena is a psychiatrist who in 2023 promoted the creation of the Environmental and Urban Mental Health Chapter of the Association of Psychiatrists of Argentina.
She stresses the importance of taking concrete actions to manage these emotions: “When you start working on an issue, the actions trigger positive responses that help to mitigate the concern.”
Studies such as The Lancet’s on youth eco-anxiety have shown that the magnitude of the climate crisis, on a global scale, can bring about feelings of despair – an apocalyptic sense that it is “too late”. But for mental health at least, taking action on climate impacts is effective.
Marchena sees this especially with children and adolescents, in whose mental health she has specialised. “You have to get them to take action, because if you don’t, you generate powerlessness.”
The affection or emotional bonds that are formed in collaboration help us not to be so afraid of the dystopian future that we imagine
Alice Poma, researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico focusing on emotions and social movements
Alice Poma, a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico focusing on emotions and social movements, corroborates this. One of her work’s findings is that “activism is almost therapeutic in terms of climate emotions”, she explains. “Because by organising, by participating, you get to manage some of the climate emotions.”
Having hope via collective action and creating spaces for discussion allows us to think about a different future, Poma says: “The affection or emotional bonds that are formed in collaboration help us not to be so afraid of the dystopian future that we imagine.”
This is why people like Yanine Quiroz are looking for strategies to cope with the emotional impact of extreme weather. “I have some ideas in mind to respond in the short term to those future situations that could trigger eco-anxiety again,” she says.
These strategies range from individual solutions, such as adapting and preparing the spaces she lives and works in for future extremes, to collective actions, such as participating in reforestation efforts with NGOs. “But the fear definitely comes up every time the heat becomes more intense,” she notes.
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