Climate change, natural hazards and mental health: Intervention research, gaps, and future directions

Courtney Welton-Mitchell, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental & Occupational Health at the Colorado School of Public Health, where she directs the Certificate in Climate and Disaster Resilience. She is also a research associate with the Natural Hazards Center, IBS, UCB. She is trained as a social psychologist and a mental health clinician specializing in traumatic stress. She has worked for several years in complex humanitarian crisis, first as a humanitarian aid worker, and later as an intervention researcher. Her research focuses on health/public health interventions in disasters and complex humanitarian crises using mixed methods. She has also conducted studies on public health messaging campaigns and social norms approaches to behavioral change. Her research includes mental health integrated climate adaptation and disaster preparedness interventions — among earthquake and flood affected smallholder farming communities in N. India, Nepal and Haiti, and wildfire and drought affected communities in Australia.