The Psychological Impact of Ecosystem Degradation on Local Communities Dependent on Livestock

Abstract

This paper addresses a phenomenon of growing academic significance yet largely absent from the rural mental health literature: the profound psychological wounds inflicted by ecosystem degradation on communities whose livelihoods depend on livestock. Drawing upon a critical and integrative review of empirical evidence accumulated between 2015 and 2025, we map the psychosocial pathways linking environmental destruction to deteriorating mental health among farmers and pastoralists. Findings reveal a multifaceted constellation of psychological responses encompassing ecological grief lacking socially recognized rituals of mourning chronic climate anxiety that transcends individual disorder to erode collective identity, and moral injury arising from coercion into practices that contradict inherited agricultural value systems. Critical gaps emerge in the scarcity of mental health interventions designed specifically for this population, and in the absence of integrated frameworks that simultaneously address environmental and psychological health dimensions within a One Health paradigm. The study concludes that effective responses require moving beyond individual-level intervention toward structural community policies that recognize ecological grief as a legitimate human response rather than a pathology requiring treatment.