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, ed 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 practicioners.
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, 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
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
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
Bednarek, S. (2018). How wide is the field: Gestalt therapy, capitalism and the natural world. 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