Skip to main content

Call for papers - Climate change and mental health

Guest Editor:
Fanli Jia, PhD, Seton Hall University, USA

Submission Status: Open   |   Submission Deadline: 23 July 2024
 

BMC Psychology invites submissions for our Collection on Climate change and mental health.

Climate change is leading to more frequent and extreme weather events. One response to these changes is increased psychological distress in people that could develop into more serious mental problems, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse disorders, or depression. This Collection encompasses all possible topics related to climate change and mental health.

New Content ItemThis Collection supports and amplifies research related to SDG 3: Good Health & Wellbeing and SDG 13: Climate Action.

Meet the Guest Editor

Back to top

Fanli Jia, PhD, Seton Hall University, USA

Dr Fanli Jia is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Seton Hall University. His research focuses on morality and pro-environmental behaviors from developmental and cultural perspectives. Specifically, he investigates how youth promote environmental and climate change awareness and moral behavior in various contexts (e.g., family, school, work, community, and culture). He is also interested in positive outcomes of human–environment interactions including motivations between engagement in pro-environmental activities and psychological wellbeing. Dr Jia serves as an Editorial Board Member for BMC Psychology.





 


About the Collection

BMC Psychology invites submissions for our Collection on Climate change and mental health.

Climate change is leading to more frequent and extreme weather events. One response to these changes is increased psychological distress in people that could develop into more serious mental problems, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse disorders, or depression.

Conversely, engaging in pro-environmental behaviors and taking action to address climate change can have positive psychological benefits, including a sense of purpose, increased resilience, and improved overall wellbeing. By investigating attitudes, beliefs, emotions, knowledge, and motivations, researchers can identify effective strategies to raise awareness, foster environmental awareness, and motivate people to take meaningful action on climate change.

Climate change can also affect our socioeconomic status to the detriment to our mental health, through food and water insecurity, homelessness, and unemployment. A possible consequence of climate change is that socioeconomic disparities will be exacerbated, further enhancing the mental health gap. It is imperative that we recognize and address these complex interactions to build resilient communities in the face of climate change as well as promote mental well-being.

This Collection encompasses all possible topics related to climate change and mental health – it welcomes contributions from theoretical, qualitative, and quantitative perspectives.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • Impacts of climate change on mental health and wellbeing
  • Psychological factors of pro-environmental behaviors
  • Environmental and climate change education
  • Climate change beliefs, framing, and communication 
  • Health disparities, environmental justice, and climate change adaptation


Image credit: imaginima / Getty Images / iStock

  1. Climate change is seriously affecting human survival and development, and the anxiety caused by it is becoming increasingly prominent. How to alleviate people’s climate change anxiety, improve the ecological e...

    Authors: Ziqi Qin, Qi Wu, Cuihua Bi, Yanwei Deng and Qiuyun Hu
    Citation: BMC Psychology 2024 12:241
    Content type: Research Published on:

  2. Eco-anxiety is increasingly recognized as a shared experience by many people internationally, encompassing fear of environmental catastrophe and anxiety about ecological crises. Despite its importance in the c...

    Authors: Andrea Rodríguez Quiroga, Juan Segundo Peña Loray, Antonio Moreno Poyato, Juan Roldán Merino, Camila Botero, Laura Bongiardino, Saskia Ivana Aufenacker, Samantha K. Stanley, Tiago Costa, Sílvia Luís, Léan V. O’Brien, Teaghan L. Hogg, Luísa Teixeira-Santos, Lara Guedes de Pinho, Carlos Sequeira and Francisco Sampaio
    Citation: BMC Psychology 2024 12:227
    Content type: Research Published on:

  3. While adverse impacts of climate change on physical health are well-known, research on its effects on mental health is still scarce. Thus, it is unclear whether potential impacts have already reached treatment...

    Authors: Katharina Trost, Verena Ertl, Julia König, Rita Rosner and Hannah Comtesse
    Citation: BMC Psychology 2024 12:192
    Content type: Research Published on:

  4. As the threat of climate change looms large, and we experience first-hand the impacts of rapid global warming, researchers and clinicians emphasize the need to better understand the impact of these changes on ...

    Authors: Stylianos Syropoulos, Kyle Fiore Law, Andrea Mah and Liane Young
    Citation: BMC Psychology 2024 12:182
    Content type: Research Published on:

  5. The following protocol pertains to a pioneer study, aiming to investigate how weather sensitivity and walking in different environments affects the psychophysiological responses to the stress of individuals wi...

    Authors: Dalia Martinaitienė, Francisco Sampaio, Zsolt Demetrovics, Biljana Gjoneska, Justina Portačenko, Austėja Damulevičiūtė, Toma Garbenytė-Apolinskienė, Julius Burkauskas and Nijolė Kažukauskienė
    Citation: BMC Psychology 2024 12:82
    Content type: Study Protocol Published on:

Submission Guidelines

Back to top

This Collection welcomes submission of original Research Articles. Should you wish to submit a different article type, please read our submission guidelines to confirm that type is accepted by the journal. Articles for this Collection should be submitted via our submission system, Snapp. During the submission process you will be asked whether you are submitting to a Collection, please select "Climate change and mental health" from the dropdown menu.

Articles will undergo the journal’s standard peer-review process and are subject to all of the journal’s standard policies. Articles will be added to the Collection as they are published.

The Editors have no competing interests with the submissions which they handle through the peer review process. The peer review of any submissions for which the Editors have competing interests is handled by another Editorial Board Member who has no competing interests.