Workbooks and Guidebooks on Climate Mental Health

• Climate Therapy Alliance (Pacific Northwest Chapter) has produced an Emotional Resilience Toolkit for Climate Work (PDF), aimed “to provide emotional support, resources and tools for eco-anxiety, grief, and the range of feelings that accompany climate work.”

• The Australian Psychological Association has published a series of helpful guides to coping with climate change:

  • Talking with children about the environment

    • Raising Children to Thrive in a Climate Changed World [PDF]

    • A Guide for Parents about the Climate Crisis [PDF]

  • Coping with Change Distress [PDF]

  • Climate Change and Dealing with Burnout [PDF]

  • Climate Change Empowerment Handbook [PDF]

    Classes and Educational Resources

• Climate Psychology Certificate through the California Institute of Integral Studies

  • This certificate is designed as additional training for counseling professionals who are licensed, are license eligible, or who have completed their coursework to become license eligible. Under specific circumstances, prospective medical and mental health professionals who are not yet licensed may apply if they have completed the great majority of their coursework and have secured a traineeship or internship for gaining training hours of counseling and psychotherapy and have plans to complete their coursework in parallel.

• “Psychotherapy and a Changing Planet: Climate Psychology” - an online course through JFK University, taught by Leslie Davenport (6 CEU credits available for mental health professionals).

  • “This course will introduce comprehensive strategies and resources for mental health professionals, addressing key clinical themes specific to the psychological features and impact of climate change.”

• The Post Carbon Institute offers an online course, “Think Resilience”, addressing these questions:

  • “How to make sense of the complex challenges society now faces. What are the underlying, systemic forces at play? What brought us to this place? Acting without this understanding is like putting a band-aid on a life-threatening injury.

  • “How to build community resilience. While we must also act in our individual lives and as national and global citizens, building the resilience of our communities is an essential response to the 21st century’s multiple sustainability crises.”

• Carbon Conversations offers a number of downloadable educational resources, including:

  • “In Time for Tomorrow? the Carbon Conversations Handbook.” (UK-oriented)

  • “In Time for Tomorrow? the International Carbon Conversations Handbook.”

  • “The Carbon Conversations Facilitators’ Guide.”

• The Pacific Graduate Institute offers a Certificate Program in Ecopsychology.

  • It is an online, 3-month course.

  • While not focused only on climate, one of the program’s 6 learning objectives is:

    • “Address eco-anxiety, eco-grief and climate trauma in climate disaster situations.”

  • CEUs for mental health professionals are available.

Class Title:
"Climate & Mind: Social Work and Social Justice in the face of a Changing Planet"

Topics / Themes to be covered in a proposed course: (detailed references listed below)

• Topic 1: Climate, Social Work, and Mental Health - an introduction (review articles about climate change and mental health)

  • Readings: Barry et al., 2010; Clayton & Christie, 2018; Hayes et al, 2018i; 2018ii;  Whitmore-Williams et al., 2017; Rice, 2016

• Topic 2: Perspectives on Climate and Mental Health from various Mental Health fields (Social Work, Psychiatry, Psychology, Psychoanalysis, Nursing, Emergency Medicine, Sociology)

  • Readings: Alston, 2015, and other articles

• Topic 3: Clinical Implications of Climate Change - Ecological Grief, Solastalgia, Pretraumatic Stress Disorder, and other diagnoses related to direct environmental loss, or awareness of change

  • Readings: Cunsolo & Ellis, 2018; Cunsolo & Landman, 2017; Davenport, 2017, Ch. 2-3, 5

• Topic 4: Mental Health Resilience and Climate Change (Including critiques of the concept of ‘resilience’)

  • Readings: Doppelt, 2016; Torres & Casey, 2017; Davenport, 2017, Ch. 6

• Topic 5: Climate Change, and the psychology of belief/behavior change

  • Readings: Stoknes, 2015; Marshall, 2015; Hoffman, 2015; Kalmus, 2017; Davenport, 2017, Ch. 1

• Topic 6: Climate Change and Social Justice (subtopics a-e, below)

  • 6a. Climate & intersectionality - (Kaijser, 2014)

  • 6b. Climate, race & ethnicity

  • 6c. Climate & disability - (Saxton & Ghenis, 2018)

  • 6d. Gender, Ecofeminism, and feminist psychology (Nagel, 2016; Plesa, 2019)

  • 6e. Climate & Socioeconomic status

• Topic 7: Climate Change and spirituality/faith

  • Readings: Hanh, T. N., et al., 2013; Macy & Johnstone, 2012

• Topic 8: Climate Change, Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), and Indigenous Rights

  • Readings: Hunter, 2009

• Topic 9: Ecopsychology, eco-social work, and the Environment in Social Work Practice

  • Readings: Besthorn, 2015

• Topic 10: Climate Change and forced migration

  • Readings: Torres & Casey, 2017

• Topic 11: Climate Change, and conflict/violence

  • Readings: Obradovich, 2018

• Topic 12: The role of Mental Health Professionals in the face of Climate Breakdown

  • Readings: Davenport, 2017; Orange, 2016

Books (to be read, either in full or as samples):

1. Clayton, S and C Manning (2018). Psychology and Climate Change: Human Perceptions, Impacts, and Responses.

2. Cunsolo, (2017) A. Mourning Nature: Hope at the Heart of Ecological Loss and Grief

3. Davenport, L. (2017) Emotional Resiliency in the Era of Climate Change: A Clinician's Guide.

4. Doppelt, B. (2016) Transformational Resilience: How Building Human Resilience to Climate Disruption Can Safeguard Society and Increase Wellbeing.

5. Hanh, T. N. et al. (2013). Spiritual ecology: the cry of the earth.

6. Hoffman, A. J. (2015). How culture shapes the climate change debate.

7. Marshall, G. (2015). Don't even think about it: Why our brains are wired to ignore climate change.

8. Macy, J., & Johnstone, C. (2012). Active hope: How to face the mess we're in without going crazy.

9. Nagel, J. (2016) Gender and Climate Change: Impacts, Science, Policy Routledge.

10. Nicholsen, S. (2002). The Love of Nature and the End of the World.

11. Orange, D.M. Climate Crisis, Psychoanalysis, and Radical Ethics

12. Stoknes, P.E. (2015). What we think about when we try not to think about global warming: Toward a new psychology of climate action.

Academic Articles:

1. Albrecht, G., et al (2007). Solastalgia: the distress caused by environmental change. Australasian psychiatry, 15(sup1), S95-S98.

2. Alston, M. (2015). Social work, climate change and global cooperation. International Social Work, 58(3), 355-363.

3. Berry, H. L., Waite, T. D., Dear, K. B., Capon, A. G., & Murray, V. (2018). The case for systems thinking about climate change and mental health. Nature Climate Change, 8(4), 282.

4. Besthorn, F. H. (2014). Ecopsychology, Meet Ecosocialwork: What You Might Not Know—A Brief Overview and Reflective Comment. Ecopsychology, 6(4), 199-206.

5. Clayton, S., C. Manning, K. Krygsman, and M. Speiser (2017). “Mental Health and Our Changing Climate: Impacts, Implications, and Guidance.” American Psychological Association, March, 2017.

6. Cunsolo, A, and N Ellis (2018). Ecological grief as a mental health response to climate change-related loss. Nature Climate Change, April 2018.

7. Ebi, K. L., Berry, P., Hayes, K., Boyer, C., Sellers, S., Enright, P. M., & Hess, J. J. (2018). Stress Testing the Capacity of Health Systems to Manage Climate Change-Related Shocks and Stresses. International journal of environmental research and public health, 15(11), 2370. doi:10.3390/ijerph15112370

8. Hayes, K., Blashki, G., Wiseman, J., Burke, S., & Reifels, L. (2018). Climate change and mental health: risks, impacts and priority actions. International Journal of Mental Health Systems, 12(1), 28.

9. Ferguson, M. A., & Branscombe, N. R. (2010). Collective guilt mediates the effect of beliefs about global warming on willingness to engage in mitigation behavior. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 30(2), 135-142.

10. Hayes, K., & Poland, B. (2018). Addressing Mental Health in a Changing Climate: Incorporating Mental Health Indicators into Climate Change and Health Vulnerability and Adaptation Assessments. International journal of environmental research and public health, 15(9), 1806. doi:10.3390/ijerph15091806

11. Hunter, E. 2009. ‘Radical hope’ and rain: Climate change and the mental health of indigenous residents of northern Australia. Australasian Psychiatry. [Online]. 17(6), pp 445-452. 

12. Obradovich, N., et al. (2018). Empirical evidence of mental health risks posed by climate change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(43), 10953-10958.

13. Rice, S and McIver, L. (2016). Climate change and mental health: Rationale for research and intervention planning. Asian Journal of Psychiatry. 20, pp1-2.

14. Torres, J and Casey, J. (2017). The centrality of social ties to climate migration and mental health. BMC Public Health. 

15. Whitmore-Williams, S, Manning, C, Krygsman, K and Speiser, M. (2017). Mental Health and our Changing Climate. [Online]. Washington DC: American Psychological Association.

16. “The Psychological Impacts of Global Climate Change” American Psychologist. 66(4): 265-276.

Films

1. Attutauniujuk Nunami/Lament for the Land (http://www.lamentfortheland.ca/)

2. Scenes from First Reformed