ARTICLE ︎

Minds Left Behind

Exposing the international failure to investigate, let alone treat, climate-related mental health issues in the Global South.

The IPCC trumpeted that this publication would be the beginning of taking the mental health aspects of climate change seriously, and I want to believe that.

To take the continent of Africa as our example, the dedicated chapter of 140 pages has just 12 lines related to mental health. A major chunk of this is spent discussing problematic racialised stereotyping such as allusions to “emotional control, aggression and violent behaviour, escalating rates of interpersonal violence, with homicide rising by as much as 18%...”.

This is inadvertently reminiscent of outdated and persecutory anthropological discourses on race, disability and madness. The only other conditions mentioned explicitly are depression, anxiety and PTSD following extreme weather events. These are dealt with in a single sentence.

The Asia chapter alludes to mental health only two times. The chapter is 109 pages long. One allusion is a short paragraph that links high temperatures with mental disorders and increased suicide risk in several countries.

Published by The Ecologist (full article here)