By Fadumo Abdikhadar – Art in Tanzania intern
Do you know why you sweat?”
When it’s hot outside, your body activates its internal air conditioning system: thermoregulation, the process of maintaining a stable internal body temperature. This essential function is governed by the central nervous system (CNS), the same system targeted by psychiatric drugs.
Many antipsychotic medications, including those used to treat schizophrenia, interfere with the body’s ability to thermoregulate. They block dopamine pathways and inhibit sweating. This makes people on these medications more vulnerable to heatstroke, dehydration, dangerously low blood pressure, and death. And as the planet warms, this isn’t a fringe issue — it’s a public health crisis.
In much of Sub-Saharan Africa, where temperatures are rising faster than the global average, mental health issues such as schizophrenia are a silent killer. Most people living with the disorder never receive a formal diagnosis. Those who do are often prescribed first-generation antipsychotics: medications with severe side effects, including interference with thermoregulation. In the absence of follow-up care, air-conditioned facilities, or community mental health services, these medications become dangerous in the heat. When someone with schizophrenia collapses in a sweltering Nairobi slum, it’s not labelled as a climate-related death; it’s written off as an accident. But in truth, it’s the result of structural violence.
If we’re serious about addressing the intersection of climate change, schizophrenia, and African public health, we have to stop treating Africa like a sacrifice zone. Mental health cannot flourish, or even survive, in a system built on extraction and neglect. To begin repairing this harm, multinational corporations and corrupt governments must cease bleeding African nations dry.
Many African governments cannot afford robust public healthcare systems, let alone fund psychiatric research or climate-resilient infrastructure. Until African nations are allowed to retain their wealth, they cannot afford to build the air-conditioned hospitals, staff the psychiatric clinics, or even diagnose schizophrenia with the consistency it requires. Ending extraction is a mental health issue.
Schizophrenia doesn’t exist in a vacuum; food insecurity, unlivable temperatures, and chronic displacement worsen it. If climate justice doesn’t centre Africa and the mentally disabled people within it, it’s not justice at all.
