Research and resources, shaped by those doing the work

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We're a community of researchers, practitioners, and thinkers committed to disseminating climate psychology widely, not just within our own professional circles. Through our flagship journal Explorations in Climate Psychology, our podcasts and talks, our library, and the contributions of members from across the world, we work to build a shared understanding of how psychology can meet this moment.

Explorations in Climate Psychology - the CPA journal

Navigating the inner and external work (relational and socio-political) that this moment calls on us to do, Explorations in Climate Psychology is CPA's flagship journal, published annually. We aim to be inclusive of the different ways people experience and engage with the climate and ecological crisis and welcome a wide range of forms: peer-reviewed research, analytical articles, reviews, interviews, reflections, testimonies, poetry, art, and lightly edited conversations.

Edited by CPA's Explorations Group, the journal explores current and emerging themes in the field, from climate grief and trauma to colonialism, decolonisation, the limits of Western rationality, and what it means to "stay with the trouble." The current editors of Explorations are noted in the latest issue.

Two people reading an issue of the Explorations in Climate Psychology journal together
Three people researching together at a table with laptops and notes

We welcome contributions from inside and outside the CPA Community.

Find the latest call out here and guidelines for contributions here. The journal is open access and contributions can be used and quoted as long as they are referenced.

The Explorations group also offers online events with authors and other leading voices, which explore journal topics further.

See what's coming up

If you are interested in joining the editorial team (we particularly welcome young people and those of the Global Majority),  or wish to get in touch for another reason you can email them here.

A journal of climate psychology

Published regularly, featuring essays, research, and creative work from contributors across the UK and internationally. Each issue explores innovative forms of thinking and writing, navigating the relational and socio-political dimensions of the climate and ecological crisis.

Latest issue: Heavy weather: Exploring reactionary states of mind

Issue 8 is out now. In it you'll find explorations of the post-truth world, group narcissism, the unconscious, AI and power, and how these contribute to the reactionary state of mind.

Explorations: A journal of Climate Psychology

Published regularly, featuring essays, research, and creative work from contributors across the UK and internationally. Each issue explores innovative forms of thinking and writing, navigating the relational and socio-political dimensions of the climate and ecological crisis.

We also publish pieces from our journal via our Substack account. You can connect with us there, just follow @climatepsychologyexplorations on Substack.

New to Climate Psychology? Start here

Climate psychology is a young field with deep roots. If you're new to it, the resources below are good places to begin: foundational guides, podcasts and videos, defining texts, and the essential reading that practitioners and researchers return to again and again.

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The Handbook of Climate Psychology

CPA's foundational guide to the field, freely available to download. The handbook introduces the key concepts, frameworks, and questions that shape climate psychology, and is used widely as an entry point for practitioners, researchers, and the curious.

Free Open University course

Introducing Climate Psychology: facing the climate crisis

The course explores ideas from social theory, psychoanalysis, ecopsychology, eco-feminism and post-humanism to gain a deeper understanding of the climate and ecological crisis, its impact on our wellbeing and how to build psychological resilience. The course is endorsed and supported by the CPA.

Climate Crisis Conversations

Our podcasts offers an accessible, conversational entry point into climate psychology, featuring CPA practitioners, researchers, and friends in dialogue about the climate and biodiversity crisis and the full range of emotional responses to it.

From Anxiety to Agency: stepping up, rather than shutting down, in the face of the climate change crisis

Rebellion is for Life, not just Extinction; focussing on regenerative culture

What our members are sharing

Climate psychology is built collaboratively, by members for members and beyond. The work below reflects what people across our community are thinking about, researching, writing, and making right now. These are member contributions, not CPA publications, voices from across the alliance.

CPA members sharing handwritten notes around a table
Thinking Space
Climate and ecological emotions
Climate justice & decolonising

Hosting and facilitating a Climate café listening circle (CCLC) training

Do you want to help build resilience in your community? Climate Cafe LIstening Circle (CCLC) Training builds the confidence, skills, and peer community to facilitate your own circles. Delivered as a structured programme over three sessions in closed cohorts, with ongoing supervision and support afterwards.

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The Climate Crisis Digest is our monthly publication, usually a short piece written by members.

The name Digest reflects the psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion's insight that experience needs to be digested in order to be thinkable, especially when it is hard to bear (hence CPA's approach to difficult truths). The Digest style is not academic or polemical, more journalistic and exploratory in tone. That requires reflection by the author, to invite reflection in readers. Reflection here means inquiring into our emotional experience so as to more fully engage with the meaning of what is written.

The Digest is edited by Thulsi Prabakaran.

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All news posts

Our library is a collection of open-access research and resources, written or recommended by CPA members.

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Hope & resilience
Climate justice & decolonising
Therapeutic Support

Effects of individual resilience intervention on indigenous people who experienced Typhoon Morkot in Taiwan

This quantitative study examines the effects of an individual resilience intervention delivered to Indigenous people in Taiwan following Typhoon Morakot (2009), which caused severe harm to Indigenous communities in the country's southern mountainous regions. The authors implemented a resilience intervention programme with 77 Indigenous participants residing in typhoon-affected areas of Kaohsiung, and measured individual resilience scores before and after the intervention. The study found that participants had significantly higher resilience scores after completing the programme compared with before, suggesting that targeted psychosocial intervention can support recovery and resilience-building among Indigenous communities following climate-related disaster events.

2012
Research papers
Cheng, S-F.
Cheng, C-W.
Hsieh, W-C.
Chi, M-C.
Lin, S-J.
Effects of individual resilience intervention on indigenous people who experienced Typhoon Morkot in Taiwan
Cheng
2012
Parenting
Youth & intergenerational

How to Talk to Your Kids About the Climate Crisis

Accessible and concise guidance for parents on talking with children about the climate crisis.

Tools & guides
How to Talk to Your Kids About the Climate Crisis
Greenpeace
Youth & intergenerational
Parenting

Guidance on Effective Climate Change Communication with Children

Guide prepared for the Schools Summit of London Climate Action Week 2021, offering guidance on communicating about climate change with children.

2021
Tools & guides
Guidance on Effective Climate Change Communication with Children
Hickman
2021
Therapeutic perspectives
Climate and ecological emotions

What Psychotherapy Can Do for the Climate and Biodiversity Crises

Apologies in advance, but I’m hoping that reading this will help you feel depressed – about biodiversity loss and our lack of progress over the climate crisis. The thing is, in these extreme circumstances, a bit of depression about the environment could be precisely what we need – it’s the only sane response.

2019
Articles & reflections
What Psychotherapy Can Do for the Climate and Biodiversity Crises
Hickman
2019
Climate justice & decolonising
Policy

Crop-damaging temperatures increase suicide rates in India

Suicide is a stark indicator of human hardship, yet the causes of these deaths remain understudied, particularly in developing countries. This analysis of India, where one fifth of the world’s suicides occur, demonstrates that the climate, particularly temperature, has strong influence over a growing suicide epidemic. With 47 y of suicide records and climate data, I show that high temperatures increase suicide rates, but only during India’s growing season, when heat also reduces crop yields. My results are consistent with widely cited theories of economic suicide in India. Moreover, these findings have important implications for future climate change; I estimate that warming temperature trends over the last three decades have already been responsible for over 59,000 suicides throughout India.

2017
Research papers
Carleton, T. A.
Crop-damaging temperatures increase suicide rates in India
Carleton
2017
Therapeutic perspectives
Climate and ecological emotions

Compassion-focused approaches to understanding the mental health of climate scientists

As we face a future of rising global temperatures, and associated extreme weather events, distressing emotional responses are understandable. Climate scientists comprise a unique group, in that they must regularly confront the reality, and consequences, of climate change. In this paper, we explore how the principles of compassion-focused therapy (CFT) might be applied to comprehend the responses of climate scientists to climate change; by doing so, we aim to gain a deeper understanding of these responses in order to consider fruitful avenues for providing support and investigating this area further.

n.d.
Research papers
Compassion-focused approaches to understanding the mental health of climate scientists
Calabria
Climate and ecological emotions
Therapeutic Support

What happens in Climate Cafes? The Cognitive Behaviour Therapist, 17

As humanity faces a future of rising global temperatures, and associated extreme weather events, distressing emotional responses are understandable, but often silenced. Climate Cafés are unique, dedicated spaces where such responses can be shared and validated with others. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with attendees of Climate Cafés facilitated by the Climate Psychology Alliance (CPA). An initial interview of 45 minutes was followed by a shorter follow-up interview 3 months later. Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) methodology was used with seven female participants. Four superordinate themes were identified: (1) Having a keen awareness of threats to planetary health, (2) Action taken in the face of climate change, (3) Journeying from isolation to connection, and (4) Legacy of Climate Cafés.

n.d.
Research papers
What happens in Climate Cafes? The Cognitive Behaviour Therapist, 17
Calabria
Climate and ecological emotions
Creative practice

Voice 12: How Does Climate Breakdown Make Me Feel?

The deep sense of injustice. A darkness, a dread. Lost. Mad and alone.'

2024
Books & chapters
Voice 12: How Does Climate Breakdown Make Me Feel?
Budd
2024
Climate and ecological emotions
Creative practice

Mourning Earth: Ritual Expressions of Ecological Grief

This thesis considers the potential of grief and mourning to foster meaningful engagement with global ecological crises. I explore this potential through my own studio practice, positioning artworks and creative processes as vehicles for articulating collective experiences of loss, anxiety, and bereavement. To create these artworks, I draw from scientific knowledge, regional folkways, geologic history, and intergenerational experience with an emphasis on local culture.

2021
Research papers
Katlyn Brumfield
Mourning Earth: Ritual Expressions of Ecological Grief
Brumfield
2021

Join our community of thinkers, researchers, and reflective practitioners

CPA is more than a publisher or a library. We're a working community of people thinking together about climate psychology. Our members participate in regular Thinking Spaces, contribute to research groups, edit the Explorations in Climate Psychology Journal, maintain the library, and bring their own work into shared conversation. Research at CPA is collaborative, generative, and grounded in practice.

Why join:

  • Monthly Thinking Space

  • Research Group

  • Opportunities to Publish

  • Intergenerational buddying

  • Student and Young Members Group

  • Opportunities to Publish

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