Climate anxiety does not need a diagnosis of a mental health disorder

Authors/Creators

Navjot Bhullar, Edith Cowan UniversityFollow
Melissa Davis, Edith Cowan UniversityFollow
Roselyn Kumar
Patrick Nunn
Debra Rickwood

Abstract

In a recent Correspondence in The Lancet Planetary Health, Sampaio and Sequeria1 state that “climate anxiety is not yet considered a mental health disorder” and might be a risk factor for mental disorders, which is something that we contest. The authors further claim that “climate anxiety occurs mainly in lower-income countries located in areas that are more directly affected by climate change”,1 which we regard as doubly incorrect: first, there are no substantial differences in climate anxiety between countries with different average incomes,2 and second, it is misleading to aver that lower income countries are more directly affected by climate change. Rather, the issue is one of impact visibility and adaptation capacity.

Document Type

Letter to the Editor

Date of Publication

5-1-2022

Volume

6

Issue

5

School

School of Arts and Humanities

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Publisher

Elsevier

Comments

Bhullar, N., Davis, M., Kumar, R., Nunn, P., & Rickwood, D. (2022). Climate anxiety does not need a diagnosis of a mental health disorder. The Lancet Planetary Health, 6(5), e383. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(22)00072-9

Recommended Citation

Bhullar, N., Davis, M., Kumar, R., Nunn, P., & Rickwood, D. (2022). Climate anxiety does not need a diagnosis of a mental health disorder. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(22)00072-9