In recent years, discussions around the impact of climate change on mental health have tended to focus on climate anxiety.
This distress regarding the future of the Earth and humanity in the face of global warming is, however, far from the full picture.
Research is helping to build a better understanding of the damage that climate change, particularly extreme heat, can cause to mental health.
The latest assessment report on climate impacts from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded with very high confidence that rising global temperatures have “adversely affected” mental health in regions around the world.
Research indicates that heatwaves can trigger increases in both the hospitalisation of people with mental-health challenges and emergency psychiatric visits. People with pre-existing mental-health problems also have an increased risk of dying during periods of high temperatures.
In addition, suicide rates have been shown to increase in higher temperatures and are expected to rise in a warmer world – although the links with climate change are complex and compounded by other factors.
Despite these research findings, significant gaps remain in understanding the biological, psychological, social and environmental interactions between mental health and heat.
And policymakers have a huge amount of ground to make up, with mental health barely featuring in climate-related policies and commitments around the world.
How heat can affect mental health
Being in the midst of a heatwave can feel all encompassing. Generally, being hot and uncomfortable can affect a person’s mood, leading some to feel more irritable and stressed. This can have a knock-on effect on behaviour. For example, research shows that people are more likely to tweet negative comments during a heatwave.
Extreme heat can have even more significant implications for sleep. Research shows that warming nights are eroding human sleep globally – and the effect is three times larger for residents of lower-income countries.
While lost sleep in hot and humid conditions is unpleasant for anyone, for those with mental health problems, poor sleep carries a real risk of making them worse.
Nonetheless, not all heat is bad for mental health. Many people believe that they are happier on sunny days and some research agrees.
For example, a 2023 study in Switzerland found that, in the general population, mood tends to improve as temperatures get warmer. However, the study also found that the opposite is true for people with anxiety, depression and psychosis, who were more likely to experience low mood.
Impacts of extreme heat
The impact of extreme heat on an individual’s mood has implications for social behaviours and interactions.
There is a growing body of research linking extreme heat with an increase in violent behaviour, such as homicides, sexual violence and assaults, which – in turn – can negatively impact mental health.
For example, a study conducted in India, Nepal and Pakistan found that with each 1C increase in the annual temperature there was a 4.5% increase in violent acts. This finding alone is an indicator that heat affects a person’s psychology, but there are so many other factors that need to be considered.
There are other possible social drivers that may explain this link. People living with pre-existing mental-health problems may be more vulnerable to the impact of extreme heat due to societal factors that put them at increased risk.
Due to the relationship between mental-health problems and poverty, people living with mental-health conditions may be more likely to live in less energy-efficient housing, have less access to adaptation mechanisms such as air conditioning, be more socially isolated, or work in occupations that increase their exposure to extreme heat.
Finally, certain medications for mental-health problems – such as some antidepressants or antipsychotics – may disrupt the body’s ability to regulate temperature, meaning that people taking these medications may be more vulnerable in high temperatures. This may explain why people taking these medications have been found to be at higher risk of being hospitalised or dying during heatwaves.
One patient in the UK taking antipsychotics – medication for mental-health problems where symptoms include psychotic experiences – was quoted last year in the BMJ explaining how they were affected by extreme heat. They said:
“[F]or many summers I had also noticed that I struggled to tolerate the heat as the UK weather grew more extreme. I would sweat profusely, my skin would feel clammy, and I would feel very tired, irritable and would struggle to think…I had no idea this was related to my medication.”
Prescribing appropriate medications for certain mental-health conditions and ensuring people taking them are protected from the potential negative impacts of heat represents an important clinical and policy priority.
Research gaps
To date, most studies on climate change and mental health have been conducted in Europe, North America and Australia. This means that there are huge gaps in research for the global south, which is facing some of the most severe impacts of climate change.
A new project called Connecting Climate Minds, which Wellcome funds, aims to develop a research and action agenda on climate change and mental health. As part of this project, 900 people shared their experiences on the impact that climate change is having on mental health around the world.
One of them is Laila, a teacher working in Jordan. She has been suffering from stress, anxiety and depression. At its worst, she confesses that she struggles to teach and finds communicating with the children very difficult.
Over the past few years, these episodes have become more frequent and severe. Her psychologist noticed that Laila’s mental health seemed to worsen during the country’s extreme heatwaves – something that is becoming more and more common in the region.
Watch her interview in full below.
Wellcome is also set to launch a funding call later this year focusing on uncovering the mechanisms underpinning the association between heat and mental health among the most affected communities worldwide.
The aim is to help build global understanding of the biological, psychological, environmental and social links around extreme heat, which will in turn inform better climate resilient solutions and mental health interventions.
Policymaking lagging behind
As with research, there are gaps in policymaking on mental health and climate change.
Most countries do not currently consider mental health within climate change policies, such as heat action plans. At present, only 3% of the climate pledges submitted by national governments under the Paris Agreement mention mental health.
South Australia is among the few states already doing this. The South Australian warning system incorporates public heat warnings, health advisories and targeted support for at-risk groups including those with mental-health conditions, ensuring that they can access help if needed. In Athens, a city exposed to more frequent and severe heatwaves, psychologists are being deployed to support older adults experiencing loneliness in the heat.
Nature-based policies that improve access to green and blue spaces and transport policies that encourage active modes of transport have also been shown to have co benefits for mental health and the environment.
However, for now, climate change represents one of the biggest threats to physical and mental health globally. Extreme heat is deadlier than hurricanes, floods and tornadoes combined. Heat stress can exacerbate underlying illnesses – such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, asthma – and can increase the risk of accidents and transmission of some infectious diseases. And this is not considering the huge hidden cost of increasing cases of poor mental health.
Research on how climate change is impacting mental health remains limited and disconnected. A better understanding of how and why extreme heat is negatively impacting mental health will be essential to achieve a world where no one is held back by mental health problems, even in the context of a changing climate.
The post Guest post: The growing problem of how extreme heat damages mental health appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Guest post: The growing problem of how extreme heat damages mental health
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The “cost” of cutting UK emissions to net-zero is less than the cost of a single fossil-fuel price shock, according to a new report from the Climate Change Committee (CCC).
Moreover, a net-zero economy would be almost completely protected from fossil-fuel price spikes in the future, says the government’s climate advisory body.
The report is being published amid surging oil and gas prices after the US and Israel attacked Iran, which has triggered chaos on international energy markets.
It builds on the CCC’s earlier advice on the seventh “carbon budget”, which found that it would cost the UK less than 0.2% of GDP per year to reach its net-zero target.
In the new report, the CCC sets out for the first time a full cost-benefit analysis of the UK’s net-zero target, including the cost of clean-energy investments, lower fossil-fuel bills, the health benefits of cleaner air and the avoided climate damages from cutting emissions.
It finds that the country’s legally binding target to reach “net-zero emissions” by 2050 will bring benefits worth an average of £110bn per year to the UK from 2025-2050, with a total “net present value” of £1,580bn.
The CCC states that its new report responds to requests from parliamentarians and government officials seeking to better understand its cost assumptions, amid the ongoing cost-of-living crisis in the UK.
The report also pushes back on “misinformation” about the cost of net-zero, with CCC chair Nigel Topping saying in a statement that it is “important that decision-makers and commentators are using accurate information to inform debates”.
Co-benefits outweigh costs
The CCC’s new report is the first to compare the overall cost of decarbonising with the wider benefits of avoiding dangerous climate change, as well as other “co-benefits”, such as cleaner air and healthier diets.
It sets the CCC’s previous estimate of the net cost of net-zero – some £4bn per year on average out to 2050 – against the value of avoided damages and other co-benefits.
These “co-benefits” are estimated to provide £2bn to £8bn per year in net benefit by the middle of the century, according to the report.
The CCC notes that this approach allowed it to “fully appraise the value of the net-zero transition”.
It concludes that the net benefits of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 are an average of £110bn per year from 2025 to 2050.
These benefits to the UK amount to more than £1.5tn in total and start to outweigh costs as soon as 2029, says the CCC, as shown in the figure below.
In addition, the CCC says that every pound spent on net-zero will bring benefits worth 2.2-4.1 times as much.
This updated analysis includes the value of benefits from improved air quality being 20% higher in 2050 than previously suggested by the CCC.
However, the “most significant” benefit of the transition is the avoidance of climate damages, with an estimated value of £40-130bn in 2050. The report states:
“Climate change is here, now. Until the world reaches net-zero CO2 [carbon dioxide] emissions, with deep reductions in other greenhouse gases, global temperatures will continue to rise. That will inevitably lead to increasingly extreme weather, including in the UK.”
The CCC’s conclusion is in line with findings from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) in 2025, which suggested that the economic damages of unmitigated climate change would be far more severe than the cost of reaching net-zero.
The CCC notes that its approach to the cost-benefit analysis of the net-zero target is in line with the Treasury’s “green book”, which is used to guide the valuation of policy choices across UK government.
It says that one of the key drivers of overall economic benefit is a more efficient energy system, with losses halved compared with today’s economy.
It says that the UK currently loses £60bn a year through energy waste. For example, it says nearly half of the energy in gas is lost during combustion to generate electricity.
In a net-zero energy system, such energy waste would be halved to £30bn per year, says the CCC, thanks to electrified solutions, such as electric vehicles (EVs) and heat pumps.
For example, it notes that EVs are around four times more efficient than a typical petrol car and so require roughly a quarter of the energy to travel a given distance.
Collectively, these efficiencies are expected to halve energy losses, saving the equivalent of around £1,000 per household, according to the CCC.
Net-zero protects against price spikes
The CCC tests its seventh carbon budget analysis against a range of “sensitivities” that reflect the uncertainties in modelling methodologies and assumptions for key technologies. This includes testing the impact of a fossil-fuel price spike between now and 2050.
In the original analysis, the committee had assumed that the cost of fossil fuels would remain largely flat after 2030.
However, the report notes that, in reality, fossil-fuel prices are “highly volatile”. It adds:
“Fossil-fuel prices are…driven by international commodity markets that can fluctuate sharply in response to geopolitical events, supply constraints, and global demand shifts. A system that relies heavily on fossil fuels is, therefore, exposed to significant price shocks and heightened risk to energy security.”
It draws on previous OBR modelling of the impact of a gas price spike. This suggested that future price spikes would cost the UK government between 2-3% of GDP in each year the spike occurs, assuming similar levels of support to households and businesses as was provided in 2022-23.
The CCC adapts this approach to test a gas-price spike during the seventh carbon budget period, which runs from 2038 to 2042.
It finds that, if a similar energy crisis occurred in 2040 and no further action had been taken to cut UK emissions, then average household energy bills would increase by 59%. In contrast, bills would only rise by 4%, if the UK was on the path to net-zero by 2050.
The committee says that when considering the impact on households, businesses and the government, a single fossil-fuel price shock of this nature would cost the country more than the total estimated cost of reaching.
The finding is particularly relevant in the context of rising oil and gas prices following conflict in the Middle East, which has prompted some politicians and commentators to call for the UK to slow down its efforts to cut emissions.
In his statement, Topping said that it was “more important than ever for the UK to move away from being reliant on volatile foreign fossil fuels, to clean, domestic, less wasteful energy”.
Angharad Hopkinson, political campaigner for Greenpeace UK, welcomed this finding, saying in a statement:
“Each time this happens it gets harder and harder to swallow the cost. The best thing the UK can do for the climate is also the best thing for the cost of living crisis – get off the uncontrollable oil and gas rollercoaster that drags us into wars we didn’t want but still have to pay for. Inaction on climate is unaffordable.”
Benefits remain even if key technologies are more expensive
In addition to testing the impact of more volatile fossil-fuel prices, the CCC also tests the implications if key low-carbon technologies are cheaper – or more expensive – than thought.
It concludes that the upfront investments in net-zero yield significant overall benefits under all of the “sensitivities” it tested. As such, it offers a rebuttal to the common narrative that net-zero will cost the UK trillions of pounds.
The net cost of net-zero comes out at between 0% and 0.5% of GDP between 2025 and 2050, says the CCC, under the various sensitivities it tested.
“This sensitivity analysis shows that an electrified energy system is both a more efficient and a more secure energy system,” adds the CCC.
Finally, the report takes into account the costs of the alternative to net-zero. It looks at what would need to be spent in an economy where net-zero was not pursued any further.
The CCC says that the gross system cost of the balanced pathway falls below the baseline cost from 2041, which is consistent with its previous seventh carbon budget advice.
As shown in the chart below, costs fall under a net-zero pathway between 2025 to 2050, whereas they rise in the baseline of no further action.
Moreover, the total costs of the alternatives are broadly similar, with the relatively small difference shown by the solid line.
The decline in energy system costs shown in the figure above is broadly driven by more efficient low-carbon technologies, says the CCC, helping costs to fall from 12% of GDP today to 7% by the middle of the century.
The CCC’s new analysis comes ahead of the UK parliament voting on and legislating for the seventh carbon budget, which it must do before 30 June 2026.
The post CCC: Net-zero will protect UK from fossil-fuel price shocks appeared first on Carbon Brief.
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