Who We Are

We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization run by professionals and staffed primarily by volunteers working in the mental health and psychology fields—including a diverse range of psychotherapists, psychiatrists, psychologists, clinical social workers, researchers, journalists, and students—collaborating from across the United States and Canada.

Our Mission

Climate Psychology Alliance North America (CPA-NA) addresses the urgent psychological dimensions of the climate and ecological crisis and promotes cultural shifts toward human resilience, regeneration, and equity.

As a hub for climate psychology in the United States and Canada, we:

• Educate and train mental health professionals in climate-aware practices;

• Foster a collaborative community of climate- and environmentally-aware mental health providers;

• Inform the public about the varied and layered mental health aspects of the planetary crisis.

In our work, both in theory and practice, we recognize that interconnected forms of collective trauma, exploitation, and othering—including systemic racism, misogyny, and anthropocentrism—lie at the heart of the climate crisis.

Our Founding Philosophy

Our founding philosophy is grounded in a belief in the existence of unconscious processes and in an inner self that feels conflicts. Our founding members believe that our work as therapists involves uncovering these unconscious conflicts, so that people can make better decisions for their lives.

We organize around certain principles, including:

• The importance of expanding awareness.

• The fact that there is an unconscious that can be brought to the surface and explored.

• That it is our job to uncover these unconscious feelings, conflicts, and motivations—to bring us into a more conscious awareness of the more-than-human world.

We have been living in a largely dissociated relationship with the more-than-human world. We’re trying to expand psychology to meet the world– to move psychological work from problems solely between people to problems between people and their environment.

Facing the climate crisis involves processing very difficult emotions that are hard to contain when one does not have a helper. We are here to help clinicians as they start to face these crises, and as they start hearing about climate distress from their clients.

A New Mental Health Model of Care

Mental health models originally described the mind as existing within an individual. This original model eventually expanded to include the influence of other people, including the influence of therapists, on mental functioning. This model then expanded further to reflect ways culture impacted each embedded individual’s perceptions, feelings, and thoughts. CPA-NA is proposing a new mental health model that incorporates influence from an even larger system: the ecosystem. The ecosystem guides circadian rhythms and seasonal affects, and includes the local landscapes and climate systems that we are embedded in.