Climate change: Mental health axis for policy planning in India

Annapoorna Ravichander, Harini Santhanam, Samar Verma & Mercy Annapoorani

In July 2025, an official press release by Public Information Bureau (PIB), placed 85% of the 103 districts in Meghalaya assessed by NITI Aayog for SDGs attainment in the Front runners category. 

The statement also mentioned that “the state has shown progress in Clean Water and Sanitation (SDG 6), Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure (SDG 9), and Life on Land (SDG 15). However, it needs to improve performance in Quality Education (SDG 4)”. 

In the southern part of the country, Tamil Nadu has also been ranked a front runner in 13 SDGs in the latest report by NITI Aayog. It is interesting to note that while the state is placed in the achiever category for successfully attaining the targets of affordable and clean energy (SDG 7), in the attainment of targets for SDGs 5 and 14, the State is ranked as only a ‘performer’. More interestingly, the state ranked below the national average in two goals: SDGs 11 and 15 – sustainable cities and communities and life on land respectively. In stark contrast, it is perhaps a feather in its cap to top all other States and the Union Territories in the goal attainment with respect to eradicating poverty (SDG 1).

Taken together, these state-level portraits suggest a broader policy puzzle: India has begun to integrate climate and health, and it has made progress on several SDGs, yet the mental health burden generated by climate stress remains largely invisible in plans, budgets and indicators. The authors argue that the ‘climate change–mental health’ axis must become an explicit focus of state climate action plans, health policies and SDG monitoring, with particular attention to women in climate-vulnerable, low-income communities.

Keeping in mind the growing intensity in the impact of climate change on mental health in different states, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare launched the National Programme on Climate Change and Human Health (NPCCHH) in 2019. This is the framework based on which all states and union territories are to develop individual state action plans. In the North East of India, Meghalaya was the first state to develop a State Action Plan (SAP). 

While the SAP focuses on the overall health hazards as a result of climate change — outlining the ailments in the context of rising temperatures, changing rainfall patterns, etc. — a dedicated section on mental health issues is wanted. While Meghalaya’s SAP addresses health hazards from heat, rainfall variability and vector-borne diseases, it is silent on mental health.

This silence is worrying: reported cases of mental illness are rising, and suicide deaths have increased by 7.5% between 2019 and 2022. Even if we cannot yet empirically isolate climate change as a direct cause, it is difficult to ignore the ways in which crop loss, livelihood insecurity and extreme weather events can exacerbate psychological distress. This makes it imperative to widen the scope of both the SAP and the Mental Health and Social Care Policy (2022) to at least acknowledge, and eventually measure, climate-linked mental health risks.

When one looks at these are interesting trends, they appear to highlight the non-uniform achievements of states across many SDG targets and indicators. Like a lighthouse that illuminates in parts what a ship’s crew want to see – is it a safe shore that they are approaching? While there are contrasting state-wide policies that create such overall pictures for attainment of sustainable development, most of these fail to address the critical links between climate change and human adaptation. 

Case of Meghalaya

Despite extensive existing thoughtscape on the UN SDGs 2030 agenda, sustainability factors are often in question, many times being directly in conflict with human and national developmental challenges. These trends, combined with growing climate variability, make it imperative to at least ask how climate stress may be interacting with other social and economic pressures to increase mental health vulnerabilities- and to adapt existing policies accordingly.

Meghalaya’s example is emblematic of a wider pattern: state SAPs and the national NPCCHH framework still tend to treat mental health as a peripheral concern, if at all. Climate change is framed as a vector for physical disease, not as a stressor that can erode social cohesion, exacerbate substance abuse or push people already on the edge into depression and self-harm.

It reflects back on the complexity of these issues threatening the exemplary standing of the high achieving states such as Tamil Nadu. We do not yet know whether planners in Tamil Nadu explicitly treated climate-linked psychological distress, substance abuse or family breakdown as recurrent drivers of poverty. If these drivers are absent from the ‘theory of change’ underlying SDG 1 success, the apparent gains may prove fragile as climate shocks intensify. 

Complicating this would be the impacts of heat stress in the hot and humid coastal state, where the impacts of climate change are predicted to drown coastal cities such as Chennai in case of extreme sea level rise. Hence, irrespective of the state wise rankings at present, the dominant cross-road perspective is to recognise and integrate mental health perspectives into a climate action plan is quite important to ensure the synchronicity between national and state-level climate and environmental policies (especially National Adaptation Plans and NDCs) meaningfully recognise and respond to climate-linked mental health burdens — particularly for women whose livelihoods, caregiving roles and health are simultaneously stressed by heat, water scarcity, disasters and economic precarity.

Such plans must culminate urgently into a nationally-connected initiative to integrate mental health into India’s climate and environmental policies, and vice versa, with a strong focus on women’s mental health in climate-vulnerable, low-income communities. Much of the ground-work must begin in NITI Aayog’s aspirational districts that are most vulnerable to heat stress and changes in air quality to address psychological distress of women and girls caused by/ interconnected with climate change. 

Trans-disciplinary research is essential to review the current and past Indian environmental policies and strategies fit to address climate change. This would be helpful to address the intersectionality of climate change, livelihoods and impact on the women in communities. For women, the mental health impacts of climate change are rarely experienced in isolation: they are layered on top of unpaid care responsibilities, exposure to domestic violence, restricted mobility and limited control over assets. Topics such as climate change adaptation, green growth and green missions need to be compared to understand the interventional landscape of the different states. SDG indicator frameworks as well as advocacy strategies must also be compared to draw a perspective grid of challenges, opportunities and strength of governance policies across the states. 

Particularly of urgent interest to policy planners is to fund research calls and workshops to support groups and political agencies already implementing the existing policies that aim for the following: 

1. Understanding the role of climate change challenges and its incorporation in policy implementation. 
2. Listing the traditional methods already in practice or possible methods to mitigate climate challenges through traditional and indigenous knowledge. 
3. Bringing on board self help groups (SHGs) to reach out to women/girls engaged in agrarian work and make them aware of the various methods to mitigate challenges. 
4. Encouraging rural women to speak about mental health and make them local agents to collect more data on the problems.
5. Including displaced/ migrated women/girls in urban spaces and making them change agents. 
6. Creating appropriate channels to incorporate climate change in the mental health policy. 

Recognising such an inevitable link of climate change, mental health and livelihoods, it is also time to include industry partners and their opportunities to contribute to a climate-resilient national productivity plan. Ignoring climate-linked mental health in our district focus sectors like agriculture, textiles, construction and tourism risks silently eroding India’s labour productivity and, over time, its growth potential. Sector-specific research would be helpful to translate women’s and girls’ lived experiences into practical measures for employers, such as heat-safe work arrangements, access to psychosocial support and gender-sensitive grievance systems. 

Engaging employers’ associations, chambers of commerce and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) platforms in the very beginning is awareness building to frame climate–mental health as both a workforce wellbeing and a business-risk issue. By linking these practices to emerging Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) norms and reputational risk, States should aim to position climate–mental health integration as an enabler of competitiveness, not an extra compliance burden. State governments can catalyse this agenda by piloting climate-sensitive workplace mental health guidelines, integrating them into labour inspections, and recognising firms that adopt best practices through ESG disclosure norms and industry awards. Insights from these dialogues will be fed back into state climate action plans, labour policies and national adaptation planning.

About the authors :

Dr. Annapoorna Ravichander is an Independent Consultant based in Bengaluru 

Dr. Harini Santhanam is an Associate Professor at Manipal Academy of Higher Education Bengaluru campus. She teaches environmental studies and researches environment and climate policymaking.

Dr. Samar Verma is a senior economist and policy strategist with decades of experience in philanthropy, climate and social protection. 

Ms. Mercy Annapoorani is the Managing Trustee and Executive Director of the Blossoms Trust, a grassroots organisation based in Tamilnadu. She founded Blossom Trust in 1993 and has been leading projects and initiatives in the field of global health, women’s empowerment and education across Tamil Nadu for over 30 years.