Climate change is hurting our mental health. These researchers want to help

When Kiffer Card and his colleagues noticed a gap in research about how climate change has affected Canadians’ mental health, they decided they wanted to close it. 

In January, Card and a team of researchers at the Mental Health and Climate Change Alliance released a study that found the 2021 British Columbia heat dome sparked a 13 per cent increase in anxiety related to climate change among those living in that province. 

And that research is part of a growing movement to understand the connection between climate change and mental health — and how new phenomena like climate anxiety might be