Are we becoming obsessed about climate change?

Recent years have seen the issue of climate change dominate the Australian political arena. Climate change represents a global environmental threat that has the potential to create emotional distress and anxiety about the future in vulnerable individuals. Hence, climate change is relevant to psychiatrists. Jones et al. (2012) reported that climate change concerns were directly related to checking compulsions in 28% of their sample. The prominence of climate change concerns in obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) highlights the way that sociocultural contexts can influence the expression of psychiatric disorders and calls for consideration of the potential underlying mechanisms.