Climate change is transforming our physical environment and health, and also reshaping our emotional landscapes in profound ways. As subtropical glaciers retreat in the Andes, wildfires sweep across continents and open-pit mines expand across several countries, population groups are experiencing a particular form of distress, aside from the anxiety about future climate impacts: they are mourning environmental changes happening now, in the places they call ‘home’.
Glenn Albrecht, an Australian environmental philosopher, coined the term “solastalgia“ in 2003 to describe this specific emotional experience: the distress caused by environmental change in one’s own surroundings, leading to a loss of solace and resulting in feelings of profound sadness. The word blends “solace” (comfort) and “nostalgia” (homesickness), capturing the peculiar grief of being homesick while still at home, as home itself transforms around you. Now, over two decades since the concept emerged, researchers are beginning to systematically examine whether solastalgia contributes to mental health problems, and whether it might represent a key mechanism linking climate change to psychological distress.
This scoping review by Vela Sandquist and colleagues (2025), published in BMJ Mental Health, represents a novel attempt to synthesise quantitative evidence on this relationship. Understanding solastalgia matters urgently as climate impacts accelerate globally. If solastalgia acts as a pathway between environmental degradation and mental illness, then identifying and addressing it could become crucial for preventing climate-induced mental health problems. However, as we shall see, the evidence base remains remarkably small, and important questions about the cultural validity and global applicability remain unanswered.
As climate change transforms familiar environments, people are grieving the loss of home itself; a distress now recognised as ‘solastalgia’.
Methods
The authors conducted a systematic scoping review in accordance with PRISMA guidelines, with pre-registration on the Open Science Framework. They searched PsycINFO and MEDLINE databases from 2003 (when Albrecht introduced the concept) through September 2024 using the keyword “solastalgia.” Two investigators independently screened titles, abstracts, and full-texts.
For their initial “core search,” studies were included only if they quantitatively measured solastalgia using validated scales, employed validated mental health measures, and reported relationships between solastalgia and mental health outcomes. The authors extracted data on correlations and other statistical relationships between solastalgia and depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other mental health problems.
Recognising the limited literature identified through strict criteria, the authors conducted a second “extended search” that included studies mentioning solastalgia and mental health without requiring quantitative solastalgia measurement. This expanded scope incorporated both qualitative and quantitative studies, utilising non-validated measures, to provide a broader contextual understanding of how solastalgia relates to psychological well-being across diverse populations and settings. The authors did not conduct risk of bias assessments, consistent with scoping review methodology.
Results
The initial database search identified 80 studies containing the term “solastalgia.” After screening, only five quantitative studies met the core eligibility criteria, with an additional 14 studies included in the extended search (six quantitative and eight qualitative). The nineteen included studies collectively examined diverse populations affected by environmental changes, including bushfires, droughts, floods, open-pit mining, oil production, and general climate impacts.
Depression and Solastalgia
Three core studies examined relationships between solastalgia and depression among people experiencing natural disasters, bushfires, and living near open-pit mines in Germany, Australia, and the United States. All three found statistically significant positive correlations. Studies examining acute disaster experiences reported smaller correlations, ranging from 0.27 to 0.29, while the German study of communities near continuous mining operations found stronger correlations, ranging from 0.35 to 0.53. The extended search identified six additional studies supporting positive associations between solastalgia and depression. However, one quantitative study found marginally higher depression rates in regions unaffected by environmental degradation (although this comparison was not adjusted for demographic differences). Qualitative studies provided vivid illustrations, with participants describing depression emerging when “everything that you know is taken away from you” and feeling “very helpless” when unable to control environmental changes affecting their lives.
Anxiety and Solastalgia
The same three core studies examined anxiety, finding significant positive correlations ranging from 0.21 to 0.51. Again, the strongest associations appeared in contexts of ongoing environmental degradation, rather than single acute events. Five extended search studies supported these findings, with qualitative evidence describing communities experiencing “eco-anxiety of an unknown future” and living “day to day with the looming threat of the next big event.”
PTSD and Solastalgia
Two core studies examined post-traumatic stress disorder, both finding correlations of approximately 0.29 between solastalgia and PTSD symptoms. One study focused on drought and forest fire experiences in Chile, whilst the other examined individuals who had experienced various natural disasters.
Other Mental Health Outcomes
Three core studies examined additional outcomes, including psychological distress, somatisation, and psychological well-being. Researchers found that each one-point increase on a solastalgia scale increased the odds of psychological distress by 26%. Correlations between solastalgia and somatisation ranged from 0.42 to 0.54. Solastalgia showed a negative correlation with the psychological well-being of minus 0.28. Extended search studies additionally found solastalgia associated with pessimistic outlook, negative affect, lower self-worth and self-esteem, and reduced resilience.
Geographical and Cultural Contexts
Studies were conducted in Australia (including Aboriginal communities and the Torres Strait Islands), Canada (including Inuit populations), Germany, Ghana, India, Ireland, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Chile, and the United States. Several studies have emphasised Indigenous perspectives, offering valuable insights into how environmental change affects communities with deep ancestral connections to their land. Qualitative studies consistently described solastalgia as a valuable concept for understanding emotional responses to environmental change, with researchers noting:
despite their limitations, the current findings for the most part agree with prior research suggesting that the presence of [environmental degradation] increases community-wide risk for distress and disorder, which in turn supports the construct of solastalgia.
Across the limited evidence base, solastalgia was linked with higher levels of depression, anxiety, PTSD, and general psychological distress.
Conclusions
The authors concluded that solastalgia shows consistent positive correlations with mental health problems, including depression, anxiety, and PTSD, across the limited quantitative evidence base. They noted that solastalgia appears more intense or salient in scenarios of ongoing environmental destruction compared to one-time events, and in clearly human-made scenarios, such as mining operations, compared to natural disasters potentially attributable to weather rather than climate change.
The qualitative evidence suggested that solastalgia provides a valuable language for understanding how environmental changes affect emotional well-being, particularly among communities with strong place-based identities and cultural connections to the land. The authors proposed that solastalgia might act as a mediating factor between environmental change and mental health problems, hypothesising that it could serve as an early warning sign for climate-related psychological distress. They emphasised the need for more quantitative research, particularly longitudinal studies that could establish temporal relationships and approximate causality, to inform the development of preventive interventions targeting solastalgia and thereby mitigating climate-induced mental health problems.
Solastalgia may be an early marker of climate-related mental health difficulties, highlighting the need to address both environmental loss and its psychological fallout.
Strengths and limitations
This review shows methodological transparency through pre-registration, adherence to PRISMA guidelines, and independent dual screening and data extraction. The decision to conduct both a strict core search and a broader extended search is a pragmatic recognition of this field’s emergent nature whilst maintaining scientific standards. The inclusion of qualitative studies enriches understanding beyond what correlation coefficients alone can convey, providing vital context about the lived experiences of environmental distress.
However, there are also significant limitations to consider. The quantitative evidence base remains strikingly small, with only five studies meeting initial eligibility criteria. This is remarkable given that the concept was introduced over twenty years ago, and validated measurement scales have existed since 2006. All identified quantitative studies employed cross-sectional designs, limiting causal inference, and we cannot determine whether solastalgia precedes mental health problems, whether mental health problems increase vulnerability to experiencing solastalgia, or whether third factors influence both simultaneously.
The geographical distribution reflects a substantial bias towards high-income countries, with studies predominantly originating from Australia, Germany, and the United States. This matters profoundly from a global mental health perspective, as low- and middle-income countries disproportionately experience severe climate impacts yet remain severely underrepresented in this evidence synthesis. The narrow search strategy, whilst defensible given solastalgia’s status as a distinct term without synonyms, may have excluded relevant research examining similar phenomena under different conceptual frameworks. For example, in Latin America, distress is also conceptualised through frameworks linking human wellbeing to Pachamama (Mother Earth), which might not appear in searches limited to the English term “solastalgia.”
Also, the review inadequately examines whether solastalgia, as currently conceptualised and measured through Western-developed scales, effectively captures the experiences of global communities. Cultural validity concerns deserve deeper attention given global mental health research’s ongoing reckoning with epistemic injustices perpetuated through uncritical application of Western psychiatric categories to non-Western contexts. The observed correlations between solastalgia and depression (up to 0.53) and anxiety (up to 0.51) raise questions about discriminant validity. The review would benefit from a more rigorous examination of whether solastalgia scales demonstrate adequate discriminant validity, similar to the careful attention paid to the development of the Climate Change Anxiety Scale, which showed a clear distinction from generalised anxiety disorder.
The review mentions that solastalgia represents one of several “eco-emotions” including eco-anxiety, eco-grief, and eco-shame, yet provides insufficient examination of how these constructs interrelate empirically or whether they represent meaningfully different experiences. The proliferation of partially overlapping constructs without careful attention to conceptual boundaries risks creating taxonomic confusion that hinders both research advancement and clinical application.
Finally, there is a limited analysis of structural factors driving both environmental degradation and differential mental health impacts. Communities living near open-pit mines or oil production sites are not merely “exposed” populations to environmental change but rather communities experiencing systematic environmental injustice. The evidence would benefit from being situated within frameworks that acknowledge power dynamics, colonialism, and structural inequities shaping both environmental and mental health outcomes.
While the review provides preliminary evidence, it reveals major gaps in global representation and conceptual clarity about what solastalgia truly measures.
Implications for practice
This review raises important questions about how mental health professionals, policymakers, and researchers should respond to growing evidence linking environmental change with psychological distress through mechanisms like solastalgia.
Critical caution is warranted against uncritically medicalising emotional responses to ecological destruction. Solastalgia may represent an entirely rational response to environmental loss, rather than psychopathology requiring treatment. Therapeutic approaches must avoid implying that problems lie within distressed individuals rather than in ecological destruction itself. As Doherty and colleagues (2011) have argued in their work on therapeutic responses to climate change, psychological support for climate distress remains essential. Still, it must be acknowledged that structural changes to address environmental degradation represent the most direct solution.
Conventional treatments for grief, depression, or anxiety assume access to mental health services that remain severely limited in many contexts experiencing the most severe climate impacts. Research demonstrates that over seventy-five per cent of people with mental health conditions in low- and middle-income countries receive no clinical treatment, as basic mental health infrastructure remains absent. Alternative intervention frameworks deserve greater attention and support, including community-based approaches grounded in local cultural practices and interventions that support community-led environmental restoration efforts, which may simultaneously address both ecological degradation and associated psychological distress.
This review highlights urgent needs for longitudinal and quasi-experimental designs that can establish temporal relationships. Additionally, future studies must prioritise geographical diversity and develop culturally appropriate measurement approaches collaboratively with affected communities and explicitly examine whether solastalgia represents a universal human experience or a culturally specific way of understanding environmental distress. Measurement development requires particular attention to discriminant validity, carefully establishing whether solastalgia scales capture phenomena distinct from other mental conditions. Policy responses must address both the mental health consequences of environmental change and the environmental changes themselves. As Hayes and colleagues (2018) have argued in their work, effective policy requires simultaneous attention to climate mitigation, adaptation infrastructure, mental health system strengthening, and addressing underlying social determinants.
The environmental justice dimensions demand explicit acknowledgement. Communities experiencing the most severe solastalgia often face systematic marginalisation, with environmental degradation concentrated among populations already experiencing health inequities. Policy and practice responses must recognise that solastalgia emerges from structural inequities that determine which communities’ environments are degraded and which are protected. This is one of the many things we must address to achieve a fairer world.
Supporting people affected by solastalgia means treating emotional pain and tackling the environmental injustices that cause it.
Statement of interests
None declared.
Links
Primary Paper
Vela Sandquist A, Biele L, Ehlert U, Fischer S. (2025) Is solastalgia associated with mental health problems? A scoping review. BMJ Mental Health 2025;28:1-6. doi:10.1136/bmjment-2025-301639
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