A principal of a school had an unusual meeting with the parents of a student. They had come to her seeking help with a strange problem. Their son refused to bathe and even in the peak of summers when his parents asked him to shower, he had a meltdown and howled in protest.
Neelinderjeet Kaur Sandhu, the director principal of the SD Vidya School in Ambala, Haryana, decided to have a quiet word with the student.
“When I sat down and spoke to the child and asked him why he refused to bathe, this was his response… ’Ma’am, we have to save water otherwise soon all the water will finish!’ It was obvious that he was traumatised by all the information doing the rounds about the water crisis,” the principal said.
Sandhu recounted this episode at a panel discussion on ‘Climate Conversations: Understanding Anxiety and Action’ organised by The Mind Diaries, that was supported by The Climate Reality Project and VIMHANS (Vidya Sagar Institute of Mental Health and Neuro and Allied Sciences). The one-day workshop, held on April 18, 2025, in New Delhi, was to create awareness on the rising burden of mental health illnesses due to climate change.
A growing body of research suggests that climate change is worsening people's mental health and emotional well-being. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change, notes that the rapid climate change poses a rising threat to mental health and psychosocial well-being; from emotional distress to anxiety, depression, grief, and suicidal behaviour.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the mental health impacts of climate change are unequally distributed with certain groups disproportionately affected. The degree of impact depended on factors such as socioeconomic status, gender and age. Children, for instance, are affected far worse than adults because they are emotionally and psychologically still evolving.
Stress from extreme weather events is found to contribute to neuro-developmental and mental health problems in children. A child born in 2020 faces 6.8 times more heatwaves, 2.6 times more droughts, 2.8 times more crop failures, and 2.8 times more river floods than a person born in 1960.
Scientific evidence on climate change and mental health is still evolving in India. WHO defines mental health as “a state of well-being in which every individual realizes his or her own potential, can cope with the stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully and is able to make a contribution to her or his community”.
Since mental health issues, such as depression and other personality disorders are not spoken of openly here, health concerns rarely get discussed at public forums. This hinders or slows down the formulating of targeted policies to address the growing burden of mental disorders.
Rising anxiety due to climate change
“We conducted a survey of about 1,000 respondents in the age group of 14 to 30 years who visited our clinic to seek mental health therapy. Almost 25 per cent of them said that they suffered anxiety due to environmental concerns, which is now termed as eco-anxiety or climate anxiety,” said Sandhya Choudhary of VIMHANS during the panel discussion.
UNICEF defines climate anxiety (sometimes also referred to as eco-anxiety) as heightened emotional, mental or physical distress in response to dangerous changes in the climate. Climate anxiety represents real and valid feelings of fear, worry, stress, helplessness, and unease related to evolving climate crises.
These should be understood as natural reactions when witnessing the impacts of climate change and not as a mental health condition. But they can become concerning if they start to interfere with a person’s daily life, such as a child’s functioning at school, their friendships, or family relationships, notes UNICEF.
Climate anxiety is a relatively new health condition and research is still evolving. But whatever evidence we have so far shows that children are suffering from a state of heightened anxiousness, fear, guilt, and grief due to an increased awareness and conversations around the impacts of climate change, that we are seeing in our daily lives in the form of extreme heat, bursts of heavy rainfall, urban floods, violent cyclones, and an overall unpredictability towards the future.
Climate anxiety among children
In a one-of-its-kind global study on climate anxiety in children and young adults, published in Lancet in December 2021, there were 10,000 people surveyed in 10 countries, including India. The results showed 59% respondents were very or extremely worried, and more than 50% reported being sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless and guilty.
Last year, in a survey of 423 schoolchildren from various socio-economic categories in Delhi-NCR, 89% of them reported anxiety due to fear for their future. The findings of this survey was published by Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group in its report, The Future We Want, which was released last year, in November 2024.
Another study, Eco-anxiety in children: A scoping review of the mental health impacts of the awareness of climate change, published in Frontiers in Psychology, reveals that mental health outcomes due to eco-anxiety in children include depression, anxiety, and extreme emotions like sadness, anger, and fear. Youth from vulnerable sections of society, like indigenous communities, or those who have strong ties to the land are often identified as being emotionally impacted by climate change.
At the panel discussion, Amruta Huddar, Creative Arts and Embodied Psychotherapist, stressed on the need for reconnecting people and children with Nature. “Nature is the co-regulator of our nervous system. Spending time with Nature — trees, plants, watching birds, walking on grass, etc., — has immense mental health benefits,” said Huddar, who is also a member of Climate Psychology Alliance.
The day-long workshop was attended by a number of school teachers and child psychologists. They too stressed on the need to train school staff to be sensitive to children with climate anxiety and be in a position to provide timely interventions.
Kavita Devgan, an author and nutritionist, explained the gut-brain connection. She said that a large chunk of the mental health burden among the youth is due to the kind of fast food and processed food items they consume.
“There is enough scientific evidence now that links rising cases of ADHD [attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder] disorders in young kids with the processed junk food they consume. Removing such foods from their diet has a positive impact on their mental health,” Devgan said.
National Health Action Plan on Climate Change and Mental Health
The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has prepared India’s National Health Action Plan on Climate Change and Mental Health. The Plan notes that since 2007, media reports on climate change and health have increased by 78% and the academic literature on climate and health issues has tripled. However, mental health consequences have not been studied and are not well established.
The Plan notes that “The lack of attention to mental health is of particular concern in the field of climate change and mental health, given the evidence that psychological impacts from any form of a disaster exceed physical injury by 40%”.
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