Reimagining clinical psychology for a changing planet

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Environmental Psychology
• Climate Psychology

Background:

• The climate and ecological emergencies (CEE) pose significant threats to physical and mental health.
• Clinical psychology possesses skills for mitigation and adaptation but lacks a defined role in addressing the CEE.
• A clear vision is needed for the profession's engagement with these planetary changes.

Purpose of the Study:

• To generate a coherent vision for clinical psychology's role in responding to the climate and ecological emergencies.
• To explore how practitioners envision their profession contributing to climate adaptation and mitigation efforts.
• To develop a framework for psychological adaptation to the CEE.

Main Methods:

• Qualitative study employing story completion tasks (individual and group).
• Forty-nine practitioner psychologists and/or climate activists participated in online story stem completion.
• Twenty-eight participants engaged in group-based story co-creation workshops followed by thematic analysis.

Main Results:

• Three key themes emerged: Acknowledgement (recognizing CEE causes and emotional responses), Engagement (supporting clients with distress, nature-based and social perspectives), and Transformation (community collaboration, activism, political roles, imagination).
• Participants envisioned expanding clinical psychology's scope to include climate-specific interventions.
• Thematic analysis revealed shared narratives on the profession's potential adaptive capacity.

Conclusions:

• The study presents a theory-informed vision for clinical psychology's adaptation to ecological crisis.
• Clinical psychology can broaden its scope to include climate-responsive roles such as grief work, eco-therapy, activism, and systems-level change.
• Story completion methodology effectively identified novel and plausible directions for the profession in addressing the CEE.