Research and resources, shaped by those doing the work

This paper explores the ambitious task of decolonising white-led UK bereavement support services, addressing the inequities embedded in the Whiteness of coloniality and modernity. The authors argue that specialised bereavement services may themselves represent an anachronism of a modernity whose core narrative of control and progress obscures other ways of responding to death, and that the existence of such services, based on claimed expertise, can paradoxically intensify uncertainty about what grief 'is' and how it should be supported. Drawing on the experiences of practitioners from diverse heritage backgrounds, the paper explores decolonising possibilities for bereavement support in the everyday lives of individuals, families and diasporic communities.

This chapter argues that it is the loss of our embodied relationship to ourselves and our world that results in our failure to grasp the reality of what is happening to our natural environment. It calls for a phenomenological approach to psychological exploration and a return to embodied knowing, arguing that all psychotherapy should be body-oriented in a time of environmental breakdown, and discusses the training needs of future environment-aware therapists.

Using Australian national survey data, this study investigates differences between eco-anxiety, eco-depression and eco-anger in their effects on climate action and wellbeing. Contrary to assumptions that all climate-related distress is equally unhelpful, the authors find that eco-anger predicted better mental health outcomes alongside greater engagement in climate activism and personal pro-environmental behaviour, while eco-anxiety and eco-depression were less adaptive, relating to lower wellbeing. Notably, eco-depression was linked to greater participation in collective action even as eco-anxiety predicted lower engagement, positioning anger as a key adaptive emotional driver of climate engagement.

This scoping review identifies and characterises existing mental health and psychosocial interventions designed to address the psychological impacts of climate change. Drawing on both academic and grey literature, the authors identify 37 unique interventions or intervention packages, operating at micro-, meso-, exo- and macrosystem levels through diverse mechanisms. Most interventions have not been formally evaluated, but preliminary evidence is promising, particularly for interventions implemented in low- and middle-income countries disproportionately affected by climate-related disasters, including examples from China, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Brazil, Cameroon, Peru, Tanzania and Vietnam. The review calls for further investment in evaluation, multidisciplinary collaboration, and the development of proactive, forecast-based interventions that anticipate future climate stressors rather than only responding to disasters after they occur.

This qualitative study explores how therapists in Australia experience climate change personally and professionally, and how they navigate the dialectic between the two. Findings suggest that although the mental health impacts of global warming are increasingly documented, these issues remain inadequately addressed within psychotherapeutic training and practice, revealing a gap between the growing evidence base on climate-related psychological distress and the profession's readiness to respond. The study calls for further research into how individual therapists can integrate their own climate responses with clinical work, and for professional bodies to provide leadership, training and support.

Masters Thesis, Smith College School for Social Work (Seaman, 2016): The scientific community has reached near consensus that climate change (also known as anthropogenic global warming) poses a significant and potentially dire threat to the ecosystems upon which we, as humans and as a society, rest. While climate change is most often discussed in terms of its effect on the natural environment, its psychological impacts are also expected to be immense and varied and include indirect distress related to the threat that climate change poses. This thesis explores how mental health clinicians receive and respond to indirect psychological impacts of climate change in the therapeutic setting.

Explores eco-anxiety, eco-grief and eco-art therapy as responses to climate-related mental health challenges.

This survey-based study examines how climate-related emotions intersect with parenting and birthing decisions in the United States, with particular attention to racial difference. Participants were asked about their emotional responses to climate change generally, and separately about their emotions relating to birthing and raising children in the context of the climate crisis. The study finds that non-white respondents were more likely than white respondents to report feeling traumatised by climate change and to plan smaller families as a result of climate-related emotions, while also being more likely to report hope and optimism regarding both climate change and parenting under its shadow. White women were the least likely group to report positive emotions about parenting during climate change, while white men were the most likely to report emotional numbness, indifference or disengagement. Religious affiliation also shaped emotional responses, with Christian respondents more likely to report positive emotions overall. The study highlights significant racial differences in how climate emotions shape reproductive and parenting decisions.

Written for the British Psychoanalytic Council's climate change special issue, exploring a mindset Weintrobe terms 'Noah's Arkism' - the fantasy that a privileged few can secure their own safety while the wider world faces climate catastrophe.