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. 2025 Aug 19:16:1601871.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1601871. eCollection 2025.

Determinants and relationships of climate change, climate change hazards, mental health, and well-being: a systematic review

Karolin Rückle  1 , Mario Rohrer  2 , Barbara Mihók  3   4 , Maria Johansson  5 , Hanna Andersson  5 , Muhammad Saleem Pomee  1 , Eleni Vergadi  6 , Glykeria Rouva  6 , Apoorv Agrawal  7 , Balint Balázs  3 , Erika Brattich  8 , Maria Carelli  9 , Claudia De Luca  10 , Silvana Di Sabatino  8 , Sruthi Krishnan V  7 , Anna Molter  7 , Francesco Pilla  7 , Paolo Ruggieri  8 , Anna Scolobig  2 , Elke Hertig  1
Affiliations

Determinants and relationships of climate change, climate change hazards, mental health, and well-being: a systematic review

Karolin Rückle et al. Front Psychiatry. .

Abstract

Introduction: Impacts of climate change on human health receive increasing attention. However, the connections of climate change with well-being and mental health are still poorly understood.

Objective: As part of the Horizon Europe project TRIGGER, we aim to deepen the understanding of the relationships between climate change and human mental health and well-being in Europe by focusing on environmental and socio-individual determinants.

Methods: This study is a systematic literature review based on the PRISMA guidelines using Embase, Medline and Web of Science.

Results: 143 records were retrieved. The results show that climate change and its specific hazards (air pollution, floods, wildfires, meteorological variables, and temperature extremes) impact human well-being and mental health.

Discussion: Mental health and well-being outcomes are complex, extremely individual, and can be long lasting. Determinants like the living surrounding, human's life activities as well as socio-individual determinants alter the linkage between climate change and mental health. The same determinant can exert both a pathogenic and a salutogenic effect, depending on the outcome. Knowing the effects of the determinants is of high relevance to improve resilience. Several pathways were identified. For instance, higher level of education and female gender lead to perceiving climate change as a bigger threat but increase preparedness to climate hazards. Elderly, children and adolescents are at higher risks of mental health problems. On the other hand, social relation, cohesiveness and support from family and friends are generally protective. Green and blue spaces improve well-being and mental health. Overall, comparing the different hazard-outcome relationships is difficult due to varying definitions, measurement techniques, spatial and temporal range, scales, indicators and population samples.

Systematic review registration: https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/home, identifier CRD42023426758.

Keywords: climate change; extreme events; mental health; systematic review; well-being.

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Conflict of interest statement

Authors BM and BB were employed by the company ESSRG Nonprofit Ltd. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Well-being concept. Within the living surrounding people conduct their life activities (blue). These are called the environmental determinants of health and well-being and can be directly impacted by outer forces like climate change and related hazards (green). These determinants affect but also depend on economic, social and personal factors called socio-individual determinants in this study (yellow).
Figure 2
Figure 2
PRISMA flow diagram of the study selection.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Number of studies on climate change and mental health published from 2011 until 2023. 2023 (only January) was not included in the trend analysis. The number of records of January 2023 is only illustrated as a point.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Map of Europe with colour scale representing the number of studies on climate change and human mental health and well-being.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Studied outcomes per hazard.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Distribution and frequency of different determinants by outcome group for climate change, related perceptions and emotions.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Distribution and frequency of environmental and socio-individual determinants by outcome group for air pollution.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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