Climate Minds Coalition
We are a coalition of leading UK mental health organisations and professional bodies calling for greater recognition and investment in how our sector can play a role in supporting the UK in the climate emergency.
1
Mental Health Sector
2
Mental Health Sector
3
Mental Health Sector
4
Public
5
Government
Our Aims
We aim to work with health services and political leaders to build and improve access to high quality support for people experiencing the psychological impacts of climate change.
01
Mental Health Sector
Improve training and support for mental health professionals working with individuals and communities who are negatively impacted by climate change.
02
Feature Name
Support and promote efforts – both within the mental health field and in communities across the UK – that strive to protect the environment and slow climate change.
03
Feature Name
Bring together colleagues to feel confident and supported in dealing with the emotional reactions to climate change.
04
Public
Campaign to improve access to a wide range of support options that help people increase their ability to cope with the impacts of climate change.
Our Aims
We aim to work with health services and political leaders to build and improve access to high quality support for people experiencing the psychological impacts of climate change.
1
Mental Health
Sector
Improve training and support for mental health professionals working with individuals and communities who are negatively impacted by climate change.
2
Mental Health
Sector
Support and promote efforts – both within the mental health field and in communities across the UK – that strive to protect the environment and slow climate change.
3
Mental Health
Sector
Bring together colleagues to feel confident and supported in dealing with the emotional reactions to climate change.
4
Public
Campaign to improve access to a wide range of support options that help people increase their ability to cope with the impacts of climate change.
5
Government
Work with political leaders to better understand how and why people react in different ways to the climate emergency and what they can do to help
Our Consensus Statement
Climate crisis, mental health, and the psychological professions coalition
We are a coalition of leading UK mental health and professional organisations representing practitioners, service users and policy experts. We are partnered with eminent climate change scientists at Climate Cares Centre, a collaboration between Imperial College London’s Grantham Institute and Institute of Global Health Innovation.
Our purpose is to amplify our united professional voice towards UK policymakers, parliamentarians, the media and the public on climate emergency and mental health.
Evidence shows that the climate crisis is human-made and is posing an existential threat to our planet, to the children of today and to future generations. The highly credible World Meteorological Organization advises the world is now likely to hit the watershed 1.5°C rise in global warming within the next five years (United Nations, 2021). The climate emergency is now: the time to act is now.
Our vision is for psychological and mental health expertise in the UK to be expanded and widely recognised and employed in addressing climate change, given the vital role it plays in building resilience, connection and innovation.
Members of the coalition seek to work collaboratively to:
Bring a unique psychosocial understanding to wider society regarding how and why individuals react to the climate crisis, including denial, eco-anxiety and the inability to engage with the enormity of the issue together with the traumatic/ psychological/mental health impact of adverse events caused or contributed to by the climate crisis.
Ensure professional bodies can enable our practitioners to support individuals and communities who are increasingly anxious about the climate crisis, enabling people to better engage in the debate and respond to the crisis.
Influence and support leaders and policy makers across sectors to help them understand human behaviour and better influence businesses, organisations, communities, and individuals’ behaviours in their responses to the climate crisis.
Campaign for improved access to a wide range of psychological therapies for all who need them, to not only address mental health concerns but to foster resilience.
Champion collective and community action in addition to individual care, in keeping with each member organisation’s charitable purposes and other purposes, values and ethics. This includes supporting and promoting efforts – both within the mental health field and wider community – that strive to protect the environment and slow climate change.
Encourage our different organisations to hold events and trainings that enable therapists/health workers to feel confident in dealing with all the emotional reactions to the climate crisis, including numbness and climate distress, and therefore making it more likely that such issues may become part of the therapeutic process.
Our work will be guided by these shared values and beliefs:
Climate change is both a public health and a social justice issue.
Climate change, its causes and impacts on communities, as well as the need to tackle climate change are all located within structural and societal systems of power, privilege, and oppression.
Whilst climate change is affecting us all now, it disproportionately impacts minoritised and marginalised communities, due to socio-economic, class, racial, disability and ethnic inequalities.
The liveable planet is directly related and inter-connected with societal and community survival.
Climate change itself happens, and the actions to tackle climate change need to happen, on both a global and local scale (macro and micro).
Our ability to focus on the (big picture) macro scale or on the (granular) local micro scale is dependent on where individuals and communities are positioned in structural/societal systems of oppression.
The work of the coalition itself acknowledges ongoing susceptibility to structural power inequalities despite best intentions. It is embedded and actioned from an anti-oppressive practice and framework that does not repeat structural systems of oppression.
Reference
United Nations. (2021). World now likely to hit watershed 1.5 °C rise in next five years. UN News global perspective human stories. Available at: https://news.un.org/en/story/ 2021/05/1092842 . (Accessed: 19 January 2022).