Climate change and mental health

The Editors at Communications Psychology, Communications Medicine, and Communications Earth & Environment jointly invite submissions on the topic of Climate Change and Mental Health. 

Climate change and the threat it poses to humanity affects mental health through direct and indirect pathways, including climate anxiety and effects of changes in the environment on general health. While the emotional response to the climate crisis may promote collective action to alter the current course, detrimental effects on mental health are a negative consequence that needs to be better understood and suitably addressed. 

This curated cross-disciplinary Collection will bring together relevant research from public health, medical, environmental, and psychological perspectives that shed light on the predictors, mechanisms, and knock-on effects of the interaction between climate change and mental health across the globe. Research implementing approaches informed by all the above disciplines to mitigate impact on health also falls in the scope of the Collection. The journals particularly encourage authors whose work represents the Global South perspective to contribute to the call.  

Each participating journal will apply its standard editorial criteria, including for scope and advance, to the submissions received within the Collection. Authors can choose which journal to submit to based on their own preference. The targeted journal will evaluate the submission for suitability for peer-review at the journal and, where submissions are out of scope but likely suitable for another participating journal, express a recommendation to the authors. 

This Collection supports and amplifies research related to SDG3 and SDG13.