The Brief

“I feel hopeless.”

“I feel helpless.”

“How do I cope with constant sadness, grief, anger, anxiety, or fear when I’m just trying to get through a normal day?”

“How do I plan for retirement?”

“How do I plan for my thirties?”

“What kind of world will my children grow up in?” “Should I even have children?”

“Am I doing enough? Am I enough?”

These are the types of worries that came up at a recent "Climate Cafe LA,” a free, virtual support group that aims to provide an informal, confidential space for people to connect with each other about the painful emotions that come with living in the climate emergency.

A dozen or so people popped into the Zoom “Climate Cafe” being held on this Sunday morning. About half of them left their cameras off (that’s totally OK, though cameras on is preferred). After setting ground rules — only “I” statements, no advice or judging allowed — the conversation began. People shared about their favorite landscapes, their worries for their own futures or their children’s, the sense of sadness, anxiety, anger and cognitive dissonance they feel all too often, even in the most mundane moments like watching a neighbor mow a lush lawn or idle their car for too long.

With ceaseless headlines of climate disasters around the world and the escalating impacts to our own backyards here in the Southland, there’s a growing movement to address the intertwined crises of mental health and the climate emergency. The efforts range from community-based support groups such as Climate Cafes, to the practice of “ecotherapy,” to boosting training for therapists, psychologists and other public health professionals to better recognize the physical symptoms of climate-related psychological distress.

“The most widespread public health impacts of climate change are actually mental impacts,” said Wael Al-Delaimy, a public health professor at UC San Diego.

Holding space for climate emotions … and finding community

Maksim Batuyev first started experiencing depression when he was about 13 years old, growing up in Michigan.

“This was before climate change was even on my radar,” said Batuyev, who is now 25.

His depression improved with therapy and mindfulness practices, but once he got to college and started pursuing environmental studies, Batuyev said that progress was reversed.

“I went on to spend four years learning about all the different ways that humans were irreparably damaging the planet and poisoning communities,” Batuyev said.

Maksim Batuyev, 25, is the director of the Climate Cafe LA Initiative and a Gen Z advisor for global nonprofit Climate Mental Health Network.

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Courtesy of Maksim Batuyev

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By his senior year, his depression and anxiety were once again overwhelming.

“I realized I'd never been told how to navigate the grief that was coming with this,” Batuyev said. “The climate crisis was just this, like, intense backdrop to what was supposed to be a normal college experience in young adult life … and the normal hardships of growing up.”

After graduating, he moved to Los Angeles to work for a sustainable fashion startup. Now, he’s a Gen Z advisor for the global nonprofit Climate Mental Health Network and the director of Climate Cafe LA.

There’s no brick and mortar cafe, it’s simply people getting together in person or online for free, informal, 90-minute conversations about coping with climate-related emotions.

Batuyev initially piloted the conversations with student groups at UCLA and is now offering Zoom Climate Cafes he co-hosts with other Gen Z facilitators. Such gatherings are a growing trend worldwide.

“It's really about creating a container for us to bring these difficult emotions to the surface,” said Batuyev. “Because all too often we have to stuff them down just to get through our day-to-day lives. We're trying to put food on the table, we're trying to get to work on time. We're stuck processing those emotions in isolation.”

Younger people are particularly impacted — they wonder how much of the Earth will be habitable by the time they’re in their 40s and 50s. In the largest study of its kind, a 2021 survey of 10,000 young people across the world found the vast majority experience emotional distress over the climate crisis on a daily basis, while more than half feel humanity is doomed.

Climate Cafes are mostly geared towards Gen Z, but they've proven to be needed spaces for people of all ages and walks of life.

At the recent virtual Climate Cafe LA, folks from all over the world joined — from Canada to India to the U.K. to New Jersey to right here in Los Angeles. The attendees encompassed a range of ages and professions: activists, therapists, a veteran, scientists and a faith worker. Though a small sample, the group exemplified the diversity of who is struggling with climate-related emotional distress.

Feeling our feelings … without the need to act 

Batuyev said one of the most important — and perhaps surprising — parts of the Climate Cafe is that it explicitly pushes back against the action-oriented narrative that’s common in most climate spaces.

“I think a lot of times when people think about climate, they imagine saving the polar bears, they imagine protesters, they imagine people yelling at each other or demanding that others sign petitions, and it's kind of easy to understand why not everyone's comfortable starting to engage in that way,” Batuyev said.

But providing a space simply to feel emotions, and not act on them, can allow people to build community and find ways to engage with the climate crisis in their own way, Batuyev said. 

“When we're able to help people connect with these intense emotions of grief or despair or anxiety around these issues, what we're really doing is also helping them connect with a place of love,” Batuyev said. “These emotions themselves are very often transformative and what drive us to act and get involved, but I think our problem is that we lack a community around us that enables us to express ourselves and experience these emotions in a safe and comfortable way.”

An accessible support model

Though Climate Cafes are not meant to replace professional help, therapy itself can be out of reach for many people, so these groups can provide support for those who otherwise may not be able to access it, said Isaias Hernandez, 27, who grew up in Sylmar and is the creator of environmental education platform Queer Brown Vegan.

Isaias Hernandez, 27, is the founder of education platform Queer Brown Vegan. He created a Climate Emotions Scale to help people name the feelings they're experiencing around climate change.

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Courtesy of Isaias Hernandez

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Additionally, he said this kind of grassroots peer-to-peer model can be replicated to fit the needs of many different communities.

“Mental health services are expensive. It's a privilege to afford it,” Hernandez said. “Creating grassroots models that center a need for community and a safe space is important.”

Hernandez created a climate emotion scale to help people find the language to describe their climate-related emotions. 

“When someone else validates another person about what they're feeling,” Hernandez said, “I think that allows them to say 'It's not just in my head, it's not a disorder, it's a natural response to what I'm experiencing.'”

How to cope with climate emotions

Recognizing and acknowledging the emotions that are driving our internal narratives around climate change is an important first step to coping and building mental resilience, said Long Beach-based therapist Carol Bartels, who specializes in “ecotherapy,” where clients process their emotions outside in a natural setting.

Coping with those feelings comes down to a lot of well-researched strategies in trauma recovery, she said.

“That is finding a sense of safety, finding the resources inside of our own bodies to relax and to feel a sense of some control and ability to regulate our own emotions,” Bartels said.

Carol Bartels is an ecotherapist based in Long Beach. Here she is at DeForest Wetlands in Long Beach, one of her favorite places to take clients.

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Courtesy of Carol Bartels

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Using breathing exercises or other forms of “grounding” to return to the present moment can help us alleviate panic and find safety and calm within our own bodies, said Bartels. To help her clients get there, Bartels often takes them outside — what’s called “ecotherapy.”

“Getting grounded in one's own body, feeling what's really going on inside of us — nature has a way of helping us tune into that and bringing us right into the present moment,” Bartels said. “Nature does half of the healing.”

Taking action … when you’re ready

Bartels said once you can recognize and hold space for your own climate-related emotions — whether it be grief, anxiety, anger, fear, despair or all of them at once — taking action can play an important role in further building mental resilience.

“It doesn't have to be some grand action of changing the world, but maybe getting involved at a more local level of sustainable projects, or even just within one's own home,” Bartels said. “We can channel these emotions into something that we do have control over, because the feeling of lack of control is such a big problem with this issue.”

To cope with her own overwhelming climate emotions, Bartels grew a permaculture food forest in her backyard. She emphasized that choosing actions rooted in one’s own personal passions and interests — not “shoulds” — is essential to building true emotional resilience.

“As we move forward, we're going to need educators and healers and artists and musicians,” Bartels said.

The next global mental health crisis?

The UC San Diego public health professor, Wael Al-Delaimy, has firsthand experience of the impacts of war and displacement on mental health. Originally from Iraq, Al-Delaimy spent most of his career as an epidemiologist working with refugees in the Middle East and here in Southern California.

Today, he sees the mental health impacts of the climate crisis on people all over the world as the next major public health challenge. He's currently researching how climate disasters are affecting the mental health of people in the Middle East.

Wael Al-Delaimy is a public health professor at UCSD who's researching how the climate crisis is impacting the mental health of people in the Middle East.

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Courtesy of Wael Al-Delaimy

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“The physical impacts are limited to people who are injured, who may die from extreme weather events,” Al-Delaimy said. “And this is small compared to the much more widespread mental illnesses, psychological impacts, which can become chronic. People become traumatized.”

For example, he said, people who have survived a wildfire or serious flooding may be triggered every time they smell fire, or every time it rains. He pointed to how research has found that violence and suicides increase during extreme heat events. There’s also the concept of solastalgia, the emotions that come with watching beloved landscapes change and disappear, upending livelihoods and cultural traditions — something Indigenous communities around the world have coped with for generations.

“The health care system is not prepared for either the acute nor for the chronic [mental health] conditions from climate change,” Al-Delaimy said.

He said physicians and mental health professionals alike need to be trained in talking to their patients about climate-related mental health concerns. And that training needs to be culturally aware, particularly in longtime landing spots for refugees and immigrants such as southern California.

“The mental health crisis is there without climate change,” Al-Delaimy said. “Climate change is just going to make it worse.”

But Al-Delaimy said he sees a lot of promise in the peer-to-peer support model, such as Climate Cafes. For example, his research on community health workers doing outreach with Somali, Iraqi and Syrian refugees in San Diego during COVID found communities were far more likely to trust and engage with workers from their own communities.

“Mental illnesses are hidden. There's denial about them. There's a stigma about it,” Al-Delaimy said. “But they're like any other chronic disease …They need attention. Without that, our society will continue to suffer.”

Resources for people seeking help with climate emotions

Resources for health professionals 

Mayor Karen Bass is stepping down from the governing body for the L.A. region’s embattled lead homeless services agency, she told KFI last week.

The decision comes after LAist reported Bass skipped more than half the L.A. Homeless Services Authority Commission meetings held since appointing herself in 2023.

Details on the exit plans

Bass told KFI’s Gary and Shannon she’s leaving the LAHSA Commission, citing time constraints.

“I am going to be stepping down because I just — in terms of time and all,” Bass said in a live radio interview on Friday.

Bass’ office did not respond to interview requests and questions from LAist.

The backstory

LAist reporting found Bass missed 13 of the 21 LAHSA Commission meetings held over a recent year period, well above the four absence-threshold that can trigger potential removal under LAHSA’s bylaws.

Bass’ three-year term on the LAHSA Commission expired June 30, but she still remained on the commission as of Tuesday.

LAist reviewed three years of meeting records and found that Bass was among two sitting commissioners who had four or more absences over a single 12-month period.

L.A.’s mayor appoints half of the board’s members and Bass must appoint her replacement soon.

Paul Rubenstein, LAHSA's chief of staff, told LAist on Tuesday that Bass has not informed the agency that she will step down from the commission. Other members of the commission did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

What’s next?

LAHSA is a joint powers authority between the city and county, created three decades ago to manage the region’s response to homelessness.

The agency has come under scrutiny for alleged mismanagement of taxpayer dollars, including the Trump administration's attempt to suspend LAHSA.

In response to the agency’s documented dysfunction, L.A. County pulled most of its money from the agency and created its own homelessness department.

Bass now appears fed up with LAHSA and eager for the city to follow suit.

“I took the step of being on the commission so that I could learn much more and I could see what we needed to do,” Bass told KFI. “And I came to the conclusion that the city needs to have its own system.”

The state has approved money to help create a special district for childcare within Riverside County — the first of its kind in the state.

Special districts are local government agencies in California created to provide a specific service to a community, like water or healthcare.

The district would serve Moreno Valley and Perris. State Assemblymember Corey Jackson said $2 million in state funding would help with local startup costs.

What happens now?

Voters living in the area will still need to approve a funding mechanism for the initiative, like a tax.

“I believe it's my obligation to set up families and children for success, but I was equally tired of waiting for the state to provide enough childcare slots, for the federal government to provide childcare slots," Jackson said. "So I figured why not give my district an opportunity to decide for themselves whether they wanted to invest in childcare?”

A bill he sponsored that would have created the special district as a pilot for five years failed to pass the Legislature this year.

Jackson said the details of the special district, including who will sit on its board, still need to be worked out.

A vote could come before voters in 2028 on how to fund the district to support childcare services.

Jackson said he hopes that additional funding could help create universal childcare for families in the district, regardless of income, but the exact services and subsidies will have to be determined based on the revenue.

“ We are at a crisis point and our families are begging for help, and it's time for us to do everything that we can to deliver, ” Jackson said.

By the time Democrat Xavier Becerra left Washington, D.C., more Americans than ever had health insurance, owing partly to his work over the years to pass, defend, and expand the Affordable Care Act.

It’s an achievement the former congressman and former U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services often touts as he campaigns for California governor against Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News commentator.

But should Becerra cruise to victory in November, as polling suggests, he will face what may be the steepest decline in health insurance coverage in a generation, one that will land especially hard in his home state.

By 2030, the number of uninsured Californians under 65 is expected to nearly double from 2.4 million to 4.6 million, as recently enacted state and federal cuts to Medicaid and ACA marketplaces begin to roll back historic gains in health coverage, according to a May analysis by the University of California-Berkeley Labor Center. The anticipated rise in the uninsured population could have broad implications for hospital systems, insurers, and the economy.

In February, Miranda Dietz, the labor center’s healthcare program director, told legislators the changes could end up costing California about 200,000 jobs, mostly in the healthcare industry.

Hospital executives have begun reporting more unpaid medical bills, and experts warn health plans will raise premiums further as they’re left with enrollees who are, on average, sicker and more expensive to cover.

“It’s triage,” said Jessica Altman, executive director of Covered California, the nation’s largest state-run health insurance marketplace. “That’s what the next governor is walking into.”

California achieved one of the most dramatic drops in its uninsured population in the nation, largely credited to the state’s robust adoption of the ACA. If tapped to lead the wealthy, progressive state, Becerra would wrestle with how uninsured Californians get care and who pays as the Trump administration shrinks a federal safety net he once oversaw.

Becerra has some experience pushing back against Washington, D.C. As California attorney general, he successfully defended many provisions of the Affordable Care Act, including access to birth control.

Becerra said he would issue an executive order to keep those affected by federal cuts insured. But he has not detailed how the state would backfill as much as $30 billion in federal funding California stands to lose annually.

At a policy forum hosted by Politico last month, Becerra promised Californians would not lose health coverage despite federal cutbacks, saying he would push the industry to eliminate waste from “attorneys, accountants, pencil pushers” that cost consumers billions.

“I’m going to ask them to help me extract some of that waste and put it into healthcare, which helps us cover the cost of keeping Californians insured,” he said.

His opponent, Hilton, is trying to appeal to voters opposed to President Donald Trump, despite receiving the president’s endorsement, and has stumped on cutting off coverage for Californians without legal status, which is paid for with state funds. Hilton has vowed to use those savings to issue state income tax breaks, calling it an immediate antidote to high costs.

“We all understand that the healthcare system is a mess and needs major reform,” Hilton said in an interview. “The quickest thing we can do on healthcare costs is actually to tax people less.”

Left Behind?

In 2010, Becerra was part of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s leadership team and helped whip up votes to pass the law. He also had a hand in crafting it, though his attempt to include a government-backed coverage option failed.

A decade later, when lawmakers considered him for the nation’s top healthcare job, Becerra said his primary mission would be to carry out President Joe Biden’s vision to expand access and cut costs under the Affordable Care Act.

Before the ACA, some 50 million Americans — roughly 1 in 6 — were uninsured. Within a few years of the law’s passage in 2010, its expansion of Medicaid eligibility and financial aid to lower-income marketplace enrollees helped slash the U.S. uninsured rate by nearly half.

Millions more gained coverage during the covid-19 pandemic after Becerra implemented a freeze on Medicaid disenrollment and administered generous but temporary tax credits that put the cost of Obamacare plans within reach for more people.

As Biden’s health secretary, Becerra launched aggressive public awareness campaigns, loosened enrollment rules, and distributed hundreds of millions in grants to pay consumer assistants, also known as healthcare navigators, to help enrollees wade through paperwork.

“One of the common things we would hear from him as a leader was, ‘Who’s being left behind?’” said Benjamin Sommers, a Harvard health policy professor who was a deputy assistant secretary under Becerra.

Under Biden and Becerra, the percentage of people with health insurance reached a historical high of 92%, or 310 million Americans having health coverage in 2024.

Republican Response

But conservatives said those policies inflated enrollment by attracting fraudulent and wasteful coverage. In response, the second Trump administration has tightened enrollment windows and toughened income reporting.

“It’s simple and easy to say, well, the numbers are up so the program must be working,” said Edmund Haislmaier, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. “My argument would be that’s the wrong metric.”

Last summer, the GOP-led Congress passed Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Republicans argued preserves Medicaid for those who need it most while rooting out fraud and waste. Altogether, the law is expected to cut Medicaid spending by $900 billion-plus over a decade.

Congress also allowed enhanced premium tax credits for Obamacare plans to expire last year, spiking premium payments for middle-income Americans and driving down enrollment by nearly 3 million this year.

“We are now witnessing almost a wholesale reversal of pretty much all those policies” that helped cover millions more Americans, said Sabrina Corlette, co-director of the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University.

For Eric Maciel, the $800 monthly cost of a Covered California plan is too much. To avoid injury, the 28-year-old stays home more and rarely plays pickup soccer at the park — the other players, he added, can get pretty rough.

“That’s another car note,” Maciel said. “I’d be left with nothing.”

Health economists say Maciel is the type of customer insurers need to stabilize their risk pools: young, healthy, and less costly.

Hilton criticized state leaders for passing a revised provider tax he asserts will send premiums soaring and said he wants to inject more competition into California’s health insurance market — but he offered no specific ideas.

Playing Defense

Higher-than-expected state costs coupled with federal cuts have prompted California to retreat on healthcare coverage. Federal funds account for one-third of the state’s budget and more than 60% of spending by Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has frozen enrollment for immigrants without legal status, enacted monthly premiums for some, and plans to only temporarily backfill federal assistance for legal immigrants such as asylees and refugees.

Newsom and Democratic lawmakers agreed to delay some cuts until July 2027, leaving the next governor to weigh further rollbacks against increased taxes. Becerra, a California native born to Mexican immigrants, opposes what’s known as the billionaire tax, on November’s ballot. Last month, he said he supported legislative efforts to penalize large corporations whose workers rely on Medi-Cal, arguing that taxpayers are subsidizing employers’ low wages and paltry benefits.

County governments, which are legally required to provide healthcare to uninsured residents too poor to afford care, are lobbying lawmakers for funding to treat what they describe as a fresh deluge of patients who need free care.

“It’s a pretty big cliff if all this stuff goes into effect,” said Dietz, the labor center’s healthcare program director. “And there’s a choice whether to make it less bad and maintain coverage for folks.”

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.