Rising temperatures. Melting ice caps. Drowning polar bears. We don’t need to be told that there’s a climate emergency, and that it’s taking its toll on the planet. But the climate emergency is also a mental health emergency. The stats are powerful: psychological trauma from a natural disaster is forty times greater than trauma from physical injury. The human stories are troubling: in the Canadian North, Inuit hunters are reporting increased mental health problems, as ice conditions change and threaten the hunt for food. Climate scientists themselves are suffering from ecological grief and depression. And there are children who can’t sleep because they’re worried about the future.

[Read more…]