Health Consequences of Ecological Grief and Eco-Anxiety in the Global South: A Review

The climate crisis is not only an ecological and economic emergency but a psychological one, generating escalating distress among populations who bear the greatest burden of environmental loss. Yet the emotional dimensions of climate change such as ecological grief, eco-anxiety, and related conditions, have been overwhelmingly examined through a Western lens, leaving the lived experiences of the Global South underexplored and underrepresented. This narrative synthesis reveals that ecological grief and anxiety are not peripheral concerns of the privileged but widespread, clinically significant responses to existential threat that intersect with material survival, cultural identity, and historical injustices of vulnerable populations. Across diverse contexts, from smallholder farmers mourning the disappearance of ancestral seeds to Indigenous communities confronting the erosion of sacred traditions, these emotional states carry substantial health burdens, consistently linked to depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, substance misuse, and suicidality, alongside cardiovascular vulnerability, immune dysregulation, and elevated mortality. Although adaptive coping through collective action and social solidarity offers pathways toward resilience, methodological limitations and the dominance of Western-derived measurement tools constrain the field. Centering Global South perspectives, decolonizing research agendas, and embedding mental health into climate adaptation are essential steps toward recognizing ecological distress as a matter of planetary health justice. Ultimately, the psychological wellbeing of the world's most climate-vulnerable populations is inseparable from the broader struggle for climate action itself.