Essential Readings in Climate Psychology
for Mental Health Professionals

We’ve curated a list of essential starting points for learning about climate psychology.
If you are looking for more great resources on climate psychology, check out the resource section at Climate & Mind.

Clinical guides

“Emotional Resiliency in the Era of Climate Change: A Clinician’s Guide” - by Leslie Davenport

“Transformational Resilience: How Building Human Resilience to Climate Disruption can Safeguard Society and Increase Wellbeing” - by Bob Doppelt

“The Handbook on Climate Psychology” - from Climate Psychology Alliance

“Holding the Hope: Reviving Psychological & Spiritual Agency in the Face of Climate Change” - by Linda Aspey, Catherine Jackson and Diane Parker 2023.

Psychoanalytic perspectives

“Psychological Roots of the Climate Crisis: Neoliberal Exceptionalism and the Culture of Uncare” - by Sally Weintrobe

“Climate Psychology: A Matter of Life and Death” - edited by Wendy Hollway, Paul Hoggett, Chris Robertson

“Engaging with Climate Change: Psychoanalytic and Interdisciplinary Perspectives” - edited by Sally Weintrobe

“Environmental Melancholia: Psychoanalytic Dimensions of Engagement” - by Renee Lertzman

”Climate Psychology: On Indifference to Disaster” - edited by Paul Hoggett

“Is there a therapy for climate-change anxiety?” - by Steffi Bednarek

“Psychoanalysis and ecology at the edge of chaos” - by Joseph Dodds

“Climate Crisis, Psychoanalysis, and Radical Ethics” - by Donna Orange

“Climate Dialectics in Psychotherapy: Holding Open the Space Between Abyss and Advance” - published in Psychodynamic Psychiatry, by Janet Lewis, Elizabeth Haase, and Alexander Trope, 2020

“Thinking Catastrophic Thoughts: A Traumatized Sensibility on a Hotter Planet” - by Susan Kassouf, 2022

Environmental justice and climate psychology

*For a more in-depth list of resources on intersectionality and climate more generally, see our guide to intersectionality for climate-aware practitioners.

“All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis” - edited by Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Dr. Katherine K. Wilkinson

“Climate Change Isn’t The First Existential Threat” - published on Zora by Mary Annaïse Heglar in 2019

“People of Color Experience Climate Grief More Deeply Than White People” - published in Vice by Nylah Burton, 2020

“Racism and Climate Change” - published in Psychiatric Times by Robin Cooper, 2021

“Climate Justice is Central to Addressing the Climate Emergency's Psychological Consequences in the Global South: A Narrative Review” - by Garret Barnwell and Nick Wood, 2022

Indigenous thinking as climate psychology

“Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants” - by Robin Wall Kimmerer

“Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save The World” - by Tyson Junkaporta

“How an Aboriginal approach to mental health is helping farmers deal with drought” - published on Mosaic & republished by Independent, by Georgina Kenyon, April 23 2019

“Apocalypse Then and Now” - published in the Columbia Journalism Review, by Julian Brave Noisecat

“'A quest for wisdom': How two-eyed seeing mixes Indigenous knowledge and Western science in N.S.”- published on CBC News, by Moria Donovan

“The Hoop and The Tree: A Compass for Finding a Deeper Relationship with All Life”- Chris Hoffman

Climate change communication & psychology

“Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains are Wired to Ignore Climate Change” - by George Marshall

“Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World” - by Katharine Hayhoe

“The Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals About Our Power to Change Others” - by Tali Sharot

“Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life” - by Kari Norgaard

“Breaking Out Of The Climate Bubble - Linda Aspey explores why the therapy professions are still so silent on climate change” - in Therapy Today, 2021.

“How to Live in a Chaotic Climate: 10 Steps to Reconnect with Ourselves, Our Communities, and Our Planet” - Laura Schmidt

“Fig. 3: Mean differences in the four climate action outcomes across respondents with higher versus lower levels of climate change psychological distress.” - Nature.com

Group facilitation for working with climate emotions

”Coming Back to Life: The Updated Guide to the Work that Reconnects” - by Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown

”In Time for Tomorrow: The Carbon Conversations Handbook” - (see also The Carbon Conversations Workbook and The Carbon Conversations Facilitator’s Guide by Rosemary Randall

Combating Eco-Fascism and Climate Psychology

“Why We Have to Combat Eco-Fascism To Save the Planet” - published in Sharp Magazine, by Adrienne Matei, November 4 2021

“Proud Boys and petro-masculinity” - published in the Heated blog, by Emily Atkin, October 1 2020

“Petro-masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire” - published in Millennium: Journal of International Studies, by Cara Daggett, 2018

Health Care Providers & Climate

“Ecological grief and anxiety: the start of a healthy response to climate change?” - published in The Lancet Planetary Health, by Cunsolo et al., July 1 2020

“Helping people and planet: Clinical psychology in a time of climate change” - Clinical Psychology Forum 346, by Joe Rehling, October 2021

“Views of health professionals on climate change and health: a multinational survey study” - published in The Lancet Planetary Health, by Kotcher et al., April 7 2021

“Results from an 18 country cross-sectional study examining experiences of nature for people with common mental health disorders” - published in Nature Scientific Reports, by Tester-Jones et al., November 6 2020

Child & adolescent therapy

“Child Therapy in the Great Outdoors: A Relational View” - by Sebastiano Santostefano

“Climate Anxiety in Young People: A Call to Action” - published in The Lancet by Judy Wu, Gaelen Snell, and Hasina Samji, 2020.

Gestalt therapy

“How wide is the field: Gestalt therapy, capitalism and the natural world"“ - S. Bednarek in British Gestalt Journal, 27(2), 8-17.

Depth psychology

“Earth, Climate, Dreams: Dialogues with Depth Psychologists in the Age of the Anthropocene” - edited by Bonnie Bright and Jonathan Paul Marshall

Social work & climate change

“Climate Change & Health: A Call to Social Workers” - the National Association of Social Workers newsletter, Summer 2019.

Ecotherapy

“Ecotherapy: Theory, Research & Practice” - by Marin Jordan and Joe Hinds

“Radical Ecopsychology, Second Edition” - by Andy Fisher

“Ecotherapy: Healing With Nature In Mind” - edited by Linda Buzzell and Craig Chalquist

Somatics and Climate Psychology

“My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies” - by Resmaa Menakem

“Embodying the Climate Crisis” - part one of the series Toward a Somatic Understanding of Climate Change, Trauma, and Transformative Healing, by Emily Wright

“Climate Stress Lives in the Body” - part two of the series Toward a Somatic Understanding of Climate Change, Trauma, and Transformative Healing, by Emily Wright

Multidisciplinary Perspectives

“Mourning Nature: Hope At The Heart Of Ecological Loss And Grief” - edited by Ashlee Cunsolo and Karen Landman