As climate change worsens, mental health probably will too

On Oct. 8, a consortium of 90 scientists from 40 countries published a report warning that inaction could lead to catastrophic climate change in the next 20 years. On the same day, a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by researchers from MIT, Harvard, and other top American research institutions concluded that climate change has the potential to worsen mental health on a mass scale. And such changes may already be measurable in the US population. This isn’t the first indication that mental hardship could stem from climate change, the reporter notes, pointing to Lab-authored peer-reviewed studies that found higher temperatures increase suicide rates in the US, Mexico, and India.