Addressing Climate Change-Related Mental Health Effects Among Women and Children in Rural Pakistan

The global burden of morbidity and mortality associated with mental illness is huge, and mental health is seriously adversely affected in emergency settings. Climate change-related emergencies such as large-scale flooding destroy health and other infrastructure and displace already vulnerable women, children, and their families. Such emergencies have cascading and compounding effects on mental health, by increasing rates of stress, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder, for example. In Pakistan in 2022, about 10 million people were displaced by catastrophic flooding, most coming from areas with high poverty rates and other vulnerabilities. Climate-related extreme events and their associated trauma and displacement in Pakistan, especially among women and children, have laid bare the need for scalable, community-based approaches for urgent mental health assessment and referral, as well as promotion of mental health resilience-building efforts in the context of climate change.