Executive Summary

Executive Summary​

The climate crisis negatively impacts mental health, and increases the risk of poor health for people already living with mental health challenges.[1],[2],[3] Conversely, climate actions (such as climate adaptation and mitigation strategies) create opportunities to support good mental health.[4],[5] The climate change and mental health research field needs a clear, inclusive and aligned vision, with research supporting practice and vice versa. This is the purpose of the Connecting Climate Minds Global Research and Action Agenda. This agenda outlines priority areas for climate and mental health research, highlighting the need for a truly transdisciplinary field. It is primarily targeted to help researchers and research funders to generate evidence for decision-makers, in ways that best respond to the needs of people living with the mental health consequences of climate change. It also provides a strategy for implementing and translating research into action, calling for active participation of all sectors (e.g. policymakers, practitioners and civil society).
The agenda was developed through a global process that included a wide range of disciplines, knowledge systems, lived experiences, sectors, cultures and nations. It represents the perspectives of 960+ contributors from 90 countries gathered through dialogues, surveys and a global event. It synthesises insights from seven Regional Research and Action Agendas[6]-[7] developed by the Connecting Climate Minds Communities of Practice across the Sustainable Development Goal[8] global regions, and from Lived Experience Research and Action Agendas developed with and for youth,[9] Indigenous communities,[10] and small farmers and fisher peoples.[11] These agendas should be consulted before applying this global agenda in these specific contexts. The global agenda consists of two intertwined components: 1) a research agenda to generate evidence that will support decision-makers responding to emerging challenges in mental health and climate change, and 2) an action agenda, to guide how research is conducted and ensure evidence translates into policy and practice.
The research agenda proposes priorities across four high-level categories identified as areas of critical research need. Each category contains a set of priority research topics and questions. Some may have been previously researched in some settings (but critically not others), and others reflect experiences heard in Connecting Climate Minds for which there is currently little to no research evidence. These categories and the top research question within them (selected via a global survey of experts) are listed below:

1. Category 1: Impacts of climate change on mental health, and factorsiii that may increase risk for or be protective against these impacts.
   Top question: What factors increase or reduce the risk of climate change-related impacts on mental health (e.g. gender, livelihood, or early intervention)? Which factors are unique to the context of climate change and/or what known risk and protective factors for mental health challenges are compounded by climate change?
2. Category 2: Pathways and mechanisms[12] through which climate change impacts mental health.
   Top question: How do pathways and mechanisms by which climate change affects mental health challenges - which may be psychological, social, cultural, environmental, behavioural, biological, political and commercial - interact with and compound one another?
3. Category 3: Mental health benefits and risks of climate action.
   Top question: What are the best-buy[13] interventions at national and local levels to enable sustained climate action and transformative societal change that also strengthen or leverage good mental health (e.g. building widespread psychological resilience and agency, cultivating social capital)?
4. Category 4: Mental health interventions in the context of climate change.
   Top question: What are the best-buy interventions to implement before, during and after extreme weather and climate events to protect mental health and respond to resulting mental health challenges?

Developing this agenda highlighted the ongoing need to establish foundational understandings in climate and mental health research. This includes developing shared understandings of key concepts, appropriate methods and metrics, and learning from existing knowledge and practices across disciplines and cultures. Enacting this agenda will require adaptation of research questions to local contexts and consideration of the unique vulnerabilities and strengths of different population groups; their expertise and leadership must be at the centre of research.

Agenda contributors emphasised that how research is done is almost more important than what research is done. They were wary of perpetuating existing harms (e.g. extractive research practices or mental health stigma) and envisioned a decolonised, connected global community. This will require investment to support capacity-building and the development of networks to share learnings among those living with and responding to these impacts around the world; the value of which has been seen throughout Connecting Climate Minds.[14] Contributors also emphasised the need to centre different cultural perspectives[15] in how mental health is conceptualised, understood and practised in this field, including an understanding of the interdependence of mental health with the health of our environment[16]. As one Indigenous contributor stated, "when the land is well, we are well". The action agenda presents five key components of the desired vision for the climate and mental health field, which include:

1. Transdisciplinary approaches that combine and equally value multiple forms of expertise
2. Inclusive, non-extractive and co-creative approaches
3. Political and policymaking environments that enable integrated climate and mental health policies, practices and frameworks
4. Awareness of climate change and mental health impacts among key actors (e.g. researchers, research funders, policymakers, practitioners, educators and civil society) and what actions they can take to better understand and respond to these impacts
5. Improved research infrastructure, capacity, methods and data to support transdisciplinary, inclusive and comparable approaches to climate change and mental health research.

Connecting Climate Minds brought together contributors across many forms of expertise, who collectively called for this agenda to promote connection across sectors and disciplines. We urge readers to view the different parts of this agenda as interlinked, and to contribute their diverse expertise to this growing transdisciplinary field. By working and acting together, we can better protect people's mental health from the compounding burdens of a changing climate, and achieve mental health benefits from actions for a safer climate future. We, the 960+ contributors to this agenda, hope you will join us.