The mercury is soaring across India, with many places reporting unusually high temperature readings. It may not be possible to link each heat event to climate change, but we know climate change is bringing such anomalies to more areas, and with greater intensity.
We also know climate change is disproportionately affecting society’s most vulnerable members, including those with physical ailments, the elderly, the poor, and the socially and economically marginalised. And we also know climate change has become the basis of a slew of psychological afflictions of its own, including eco-anxiety, eco-paralysis, and solastalgia (a form of emotional or existential distress rendered by environmental changes), together with seeding general concerns in communities worldwide about their livelihoods, future, the future of their children, and their culture.
But let’s not forget that climate change’s multi-dimensional assault on reality as we know it also potentially includes being able to worsen existing mental health conditions.
