DECEMBER 22 — In 2025, young people open their phones to see Pakistan’s latest climate-fuelled floods, Europe’s relentless heatwaves, and thick haze from fires raging across continents. Many of these youths are nowhere near the disaster zones, yet they lie awake at night worrying about rising food prices, shrinking job opportunities, and even whether it is ethical to have children in a world under threat.

This chronic unease is no longer dismissed as teenage melodrama – it has a name: eco-anxiety. Researchers increasingly treat it as a pressing public-health challenge, recognising that the climate crisis is not just an environmental emergency but a mental-health one as well.

A landmark survey of 10,000 young people across ten countries, led by researchers at the University of Bath and published in The Lancet Planetary Health, found that nearly 60 per cent were “very” or “extremely” worried about climate change, while almost half reported that this distress affected their daily life.

Such findings underscore a troubling reality: the climate crisis is already undermining mental wellbeing, particularly for those who have contributed least to the problem but will bear its heaviest psychological toll.

Climate change as a risk amplifier

Climate change does not only melt glaciers and raise sea levels – it erodes the social and environmental foundations that support mental health. A narrative review published in the International Review of Psychiatry describes climate change as a “risk amplifier”: extreme heat, droughts, and floods worsen poverty, displacement, conflict, and physical illness – all of which drive anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress. The latest assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirms with high confidence that climate hazards are already harming mental health globally.

These impacts intersect directly with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). SDG 3, which focuses on good health and wellbeing, is undermined when eco-anxiety and climate-related trauma go unaddressed. SDG 13, focused on climate action, is also at stake: the ability of societies to respond effectively to climate threats depends not just on infrastructure and emissions reduction but on the mental resilience of communities.

Yet mental health remains largely invisible in climate policy. A 2025 global review of 193 national adaptation strategies led by Imperial College London found that 58 per cent did not mention mental health at all, and only 17 per cent included concrete measures to address climate-related psychological impacts.

The World Health Organization further warns that most countries already face large treatment gaps in mental-health services – gaps that climate disasters are likely to widen. Ignoring eco-anxiety therefore weakens societal resilience and deepens existing inequalities.

A human-rights perspective

International human-rights law offers a compelling lens to examine this overlooked crisis. Article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights recognises “the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health,” while the Convention on the Rights of the Child extends similar protections to all children. In 2022, the United Nations General Assembly went a step further, recognising a universal right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment. If unchecked climate change inflicts foreseeable psychological harm, failing to prevent or remedy that harm risks breaching these legal obligations.

Courts and scholars are slowly exploring this frontier. Cardiff University scholar Dr Samvel Varvastian, in a recent Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics article, analyses cases brought before international human-rights bodies in which applicants argue that weak climate policies damage their mental health. While some tribunals acknowledge climate-related anxiety and trauma, they often treat mental harms as secondary to physical losses such as flooded homes or heat-related deaths.

An OHCHR policy brief on climate change, mental health, and human rights urges states to close this gap by integrating mental health into climate adaptation plans and providing accessible psychosocial support, particularly for children, Indigenous communities, and people with pre-existing mental-health conditions.

Reframing the narrative

Eco-anxiety is not a pathology inside young people’s heads – it is a rational response to a world that is moving too slowly to safeguard their future. Treating it as a human-rights and climate-justice issue changes the question from “How do we calm anxious youth?” to “How do we stop giving them reasons to be afraid?”. If the promises enshrined in international law – including SDG 3 and SDG 13 – are to hold meaning, climate action in the coming decade must also be mental-health action.

For societies committed to a sustainable future, addressing eco-anxiety is not optional; it is essential. By acknowledging the mental-health toll of the climate crisis, integrating psychosocial support into climate strategies, and empowering the next generation to participate in meaningful solutions, we can ensure that young people face the climate emergency not with despair, but with hope, resilience, and agency. The challenge is urgent – but so too is the opportunity to create a world where both the planet and the minds of its inhabitants can thrive.

* The authors are from the Department of Science and Technology Studies, Faculty of Science, Universiti Malaya, and they may be reached at ista.ajib@um.edu.my

** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.