Arts-based approaches to climate change, mental health and (un)natural disasters: a scoping review

Climate change affects mental health and wellbeing globally, and in a range of contexts - from the trauma of (un)natural disasters to the anxiety and grief that comes with awareness of current and future threats.

This scoping review describes how arts-based approaches are being used in research and/or practice to understand, manage and mitigate distress associated with climate change and natural disasters. After searching two databases, at each stage of the screening process, two authors independently reviewed the literature. We included original peer-reviewed research, published in English before 31 May 2024, encompassing diverse art genres, conceptualisations of mental health/wellbeing, and climate impacts. We excluded research focused on news photography and film, popular culture, or culture broadly construed rather than a specific (set of) art practice(s). We also excluded articles that referred to emotional states unrelated to mental health or wellbeing.

We identified 52 relevant articles in the English-language academic literature, of which 21 focused on climate change as a broad concept and 31 focused on specific natural disasters. The work we reviewed encompasses a large variety of disciplines, methodologies, and ways of defining distress. It highlights the potential of art as a tool for engaging people in difficult conversations, sharing knowledge, enabling modes of self-expression, connection, and resistance, and holding space for positive and negative emotional terrain.

We recommend that future research accommodates multiple "ways of knowing" and embraces the systems thinking required to address the root causes of climate change, and attendant human suffering.