Fig. 1.

The effect of timing of adaptation and prevention on mental-health vulnerability in the context of climate change. Mental-health vulnerability increases in a nonlinear way through exposures that operate with additive, interactive, and cumulative effects (e.g., extreme weather events, heat exposure, worry about climate change). At the same time, plasticity decreases, and risk of exposures to new threats rises with time and because of unmitigated climate change (green-yellow triangle and yellow-orange triangle). Adaptation and prevention efforts (e.g., effective disaster-response planning, climate-change education) that begin early are more successful at reducing mental-health risk (low-risk trajectory) compared with efforts that begin in adolescence or adulthood (high-risk trajectory), especially for vulnerable populations. Adapted under Creative Commons license from Baird et al. (2017) and with permission from Hanson and Gluckman (2014).