The Psychological Impacts of Global Climate Change

An appreciation of the psychological impacts of global climate change entails recognizing the complexity and mul-tiple meanings associated with climate change; situating impacts within other social, technological, and ecological transitions; and recognizing mediators and moderators of impacts. This article describes three classes of psycholog-ical impacts: direct (e.g., acute or traumatic effects of extreme weather events and a changed environment); in-direct (e.g., threats to emotional well-being based on ob-servation of impacts and concern or uncertainty about future risks); and psychosocial (e.g., chronic social and community effects of heat, drought, migrations, and cli-mate-related conflicts, and postdisaster adjustment). Re-sponses include providing psychological interventions in the wake of acute impacts and reducing the vulnerabilities contributing to their severity; promoting emotional resil-iency and empowerment in the context of indirect impacts; and acting at systems and policy levels to address broad psychosocial impacts. The challenge of climate change calls for increased ecological literacy, a widened ethical responsibility, investigations into a range of psychological and social adaptations, and an allocation of resources and training to improve psychologists ’ competency in address-ing climate change–related impacts