This article is part of our monthly Mental Health & Climate Change series about how extreme weather and other climate impacts affect our psychological well-being—and ways we can cope.
If you or someone you know is in crisis, you can call or text 988 or visit 988lifeline.org to reach the national Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, available 24 hours a day in English and Spanish.
Let me start with this: if someone you love has ever died by suicide, I am so deeply sorry. I’ve experienced this too. I know that suicide changes those left behind in ways that are hard to understand within ourselves, let alone articulate to others. Suicide is immeasurably painful and hard to talk about. But I’m writing about it this month because the holidays can be a difficult time for suicide survivors.
In the United States, nearly 50,000 people die by suicide each year. Research suggests that each of those deaths personally affects approximately 135 people. That means millions of people in the U.S. are directly impacted by suicide each year, and as anyone who has experienced this knows, the weight of this kind of loss lingers for a long time. The climate crisis is amplifying factors that contribute to suicide, and in the coming years, there will be more of us who know this specific kind of heartbreak. Let’s talk about it.
Tell Congress: Support Mental Wellness Resources for Communities Facing Weather Disasters
How climate change contributes to suicide risk
Climate change exacerbates factors that contribute to suicide risk in several ways:
- Air pollution: Burning fossil fuels for energy is the main driver of human-caused climate change, and it results in the release of harmful air pollutants like soot or particle pollution (PM2.5) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2). Both PM2.5 and NO2 are linked to increased risk of death by suicide, suicide attempts, and suicidal ideation. Climate change is also making wildfires longer and more intense, and research links wildfire smoke exposure to elevated suicide risk.
- Extreme heat: Climate change is making the planet hotter, and hotter temperatures can harm our delicate brains. Higher ambient temperatures are linked with higher suicide risk. Research suggests that by 2050, unmitigated climate warming could contribute to up to 40,000 excess suicides in the U.S. and Mexico alone.
- Extreme weather disasters: Climate change is increasing the intensity of extreme weather disasters, including hurricanes, wildfires, droughts, and flooding. Exposure to weather disasters is linked to higher risk of suicidal ideation. Certain communities may be especially vulnerable, such as low-income communities, people living in rural or agricultural areas, individuals already struggling with mental illness, and Indigenous communities whose way of life is tied to changing land.
- General climate distress: Anxiety about what a climate-changed future may hold is recognized as one of the mental health impacts of global warming. More research is needed to understand how this kind of distress is related to suicide, but there is increasing concern that climate anxiety may contribute to suicidality in some populations, particularly among young people.
What we can do about it
After my college housemate died by suicide, I ruminated for years on what I could have done to prevent her death. Decades later, I’m still trying to hold two truths that never quite seem to fit together in my mind: Her death wasn’t my fault. And, I wish I had known how to stop it. One of the many impossible things about facing suicide is that we have to somehow find ways to improve suicide prevention efforts without blaming those left behind when someone takes their own life. Finding that balance isn’t easy: it takes courage to learn about suicide prevention and to take the risk of trying to help people who are in deep pain, especially for suicide survivors.
But collectively, we’re going to need that kind of courage more and more in the coming years. Learning about suicide prevention may be one of the most important things we can do to support each other’s mental health in a heating climate. Here are some prevention resources that may be useful:
- The QPR Institute offers accessible in-person and online suicide prevention training through a straightforward “question, persuade, refer” (QPR) approach. I learned about QPR training from my friends at the Good Grief Network, who incorporate QPR certification into their peer group facilitator training.
- The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention offers a wide range of resources, including lists of support hotlines for specific communities and issues.
- The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) runs a Disaster Distress Helpline focused on supporting people in mental health crisis after disasters; this is a good resource to share in the wake of a climate disaster.
Suicide postvention is a term I learned about from my friend Dr. Adrienne Heinz, who has worked with mental health in veteran and climate disaster settings. Postvention focuses on providing support to survivors when a suicide loss occurs. Here are a few postvention resources Dr. Heinz recently shared with me:
- Uniting for Suicide Postvention, a resource from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, offers videos in English and Spanish to support those left behind when someone dies by suicide.
- The American Association of Suicidology offers peer support groups for people coping with suicide loss.
I hope that you never need any of these resources—but if you do, may they support you in caring for yourself and the people you love. And if you are grieving a loss this holiday season, know you are not alone.
Tell Congress: Support Mental Wellness Resources for Communities Facing Weather Disasters