Building resilience and equity in the climate crisis
Climate Psychology Alliance North America (CPA-NA) addresses the urgent psychological dimensions of the climate and polycrisis. Our work promotes cultural shifts toward human resilience, regeneration, and equity.
We are professionally trained and licensed climate-aware therapy practitioners who recognize that the climate crisis is a global threat to all life on Earth and a deeply personal threat to the mental and physical well-being — the sense of safety, meaning, and purpose — of each individual, family, and community on the planet.
Our clinical work is premised on the belief in the existence of unconscious processes, a complex self that feels internal conflict and is already embedded in a relational and cultural world that impacts our sense of agency, safety, and meaning. CPA-NA further expands this model to incorporate the ecosystem, which includes circadian rhythms, seasonal affects, and the local landscapes and climate systems in which our relationships and cultures are also embedded. Our founding members believe that our work in climate-aware therapy involves uncovering these unconscious conflicts, exploring relational and cultural experience, and addressing environmental disconnection so people can find meaning, resilience, and agency in a world profoundly destablized by the climate crisis.
Saturated by consumer goods, information, technology, and industrialization, most of us live in a largely dissociated relationship with the more-than-human world. CPA-NA aims to expand psychology to meet the wider world – to move psychological work from problems solely between people to problems between people and their environment.
The majority of people in the United States experience some form of distress related to the climate crisis. At the same time, most people rarely talk about such feelings. As a result, people live under the false impression that “nobody cares.” Too many people feel isolated, overwhelmed, and demoralized. Alone, it can be very difficult to stay present to the reality of climate change. CPA-NA provides community and training for mental health workers seeking to provide support for individuals, groups, and communities to process climate emotions and find ways to take meaningful action.
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.
We create programming that equips climate-aware therapy professionals with specialized training, evidence-based curriculum, and ongoing research updates—ensuring they can deliver compassionate, climate-aware care in their communities.
We build accessible resources like our Climate-aware Practitioner Directory to facilitate direct support, regional networks to build community resilience, and authentic storytelling to amplify awareness and drive action on climate and mental health issues.
We raise awareness about the complex mental health challenges emerging from the planetary crisis and connect frontline communities with essential resources and compassionate providers to support their resilience and well-being.
We create and curate resources for people in various roles, affected by specific disasters, and more. These resources aren’t just for climate-aware therapy providers. They’re for the public, educators, researchers, academics, the media, and more.
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