Across Southeast Asia, climate change is leaving impacts that are not always visible in damaged homes, flooded streets, or failed harvests. Alongside the physical destruction caused by storms, floods, droughts, and extreme heat, a quieter crisis is emerging: the growing psychological burden of living in an increasingly unstable environment.
From typhoons in the Philippines to prolonged heatwaves across mainland Southeast Asia, climate change is not only reshaping physical landscapes. It is also influencing how people anticipate danger, process trauma, and imagine their future.
The Psychological Cost of Living With Climate Risk
In the Philippines, climate risk is not occasional. It is routine. The country experiences around 20 typhoons each year, repeatedly exposing communities to evacuation, damage, and disruption. In cities like Pasig, Marikina, and Quezon City, residents preparing for Super Typhoon Noru in 2022 described a familiar cycle of securing homes, monitoring alerts, and bracing for impact, while also carrying a less visible burden of fear.
For many, preparation is inseparable from memory. Typhoon Ketsana in 2009, which submerged entire neighborhoods for months and killed nearly 300 people, remains a reference point that resurfaces with every major storm. Researchers and mental health practitioners in the Philippines describe how these repeated experiences can trigger persistent emotional strain, where weather warnings become reminders of earlier trauma rather than just forecasts.
This is reflected in broader data on Filipino youth. A global survey referenced in recent research found that young people in the Philippines rank among the most climate-anxious across multiple countries. Studies suggest that this anxiety is rooted in repeated exposure to flooding, typhoons, and extreme rainfall, often expressed as ongoing worry, fear of displacement, and uncertainty about future safety.
For students in urban and coastal areas, these concerns accumulate alongside everyday pressures, creating a layered experience of stress that is both environmental and social.
Eco-Anxiety and the Stress of a Changing Climate
This pattern extends beyond disaster response into a more persistent psychological condition: eco-anxiety. Defined as chronic worry about environmental decline and future climate risk, eco-anxiety is increasingly being documented among young people in Southeast Asia.
In Indonesia, studies have found that young people are particularly vulnerable to eco-anxiety, especially students already navigating academic pressure, family expectations, and economic uncertainty.
Evidence from the wider region suggests that these effects are not limited to immediate emotional responses. Hospital admissions for mental and behavioral disorders increased by more than 60% during heatwaves in parts of Vietnam, with elevated risks of anxiety and stress-related conditions even after temperatures returned to normal. This points to a longer trajectory of impact, where climate stress does not end with the event itself but can persist well beyond it.
Over time, sustained eco-anxiety may contribute to more entrenched mental health outcomes, including generalized anxiety, sleep disruption, depressive symptoms, and in some cases increased vulnerability to substance use or suicidal ideation.
For adolescents and students, these risks intersect with key developmental stages, potentially shaping long-term coping strategies and emotional resilience. In regions where climate shocks are frequent rather than isolated, eco-anxiety can become a continuous background condition, steadily eroding mental wellbeing.
Beyond Disaster Response
Despite growing evidence, climate policy and disaster response systems in Southeast Asia remain heavily focused on immediate physical impacts like damaged infrastructure, emergency relief, disease control, and economic recovery.
Mental health, particularly climate-related distress, remains under-prioritized in most national response frameworks.
There are early signs of change. Some public health systems are beginning to recognize the link between climate stressors and psychological wellbeing, integrating mental health considerations into broader climate adaptation planning. In the Philippines, for example, the Department of Health’s Philippine Health and Climate Change Roadmap 2025–2050 identifies climate resilience as a priority and calls for strengthening the health system’s capacity to respond to climate-related risks.
Despite some progress, services remain uneven, and community-level support is still limited in many of the areas most affected by climate hazards.
As climate risks intensify across Southeast Asia, mental health is likely to become a central component of climate resilience rather than a peripheral concern. The challenge ahead is not only to respond to storms, floods, and heatwaves, but also to the psychological aftershocks they leave behind. Building resilience will require protecting not only infrastructure and livelihoods, but also the mental wellbeing of the communities living on the frontlines of climate change.
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