Climate Change and Women's Mental Wellbeing in Ghana: Gendered Experiences of Displacement, Heat, Care, and Coping

Climate change increasingly threatens mental wellbeing, yet its gendered psychological consequences remain insufficiently understood in Ghana. This qualitative multiple‐case study examined how place‐specific climate hazards shape women's distress, trauma, resilience, and coping in Salakope, a coastal community affected by sea encroachment and displacement, and Choggu Yapalsi, a northern community experiencing extreme heat, water scarcity, rainfall uncertainty, and agricultural insecurity. Sixteen (16) women were purposively recruited across the two communities. Semi‐structured interviews were analyzed through Thematic Network Analysis, guided by Feminist Political Ecology and the Transactional Theory of Stress and Coping. Five interconnected pathways emerged: ecological and livelihood loss; caregiving and cognitive overload; heat‐related bodily and psychological strain; domestic insecurity and violence; and displacement‐related grief and disrupted belonging. Coping drew on social and material support, spirituality, livelihood diversification, savings, preparedness, and collective action. The findings show that climate‐related mental distress is mediated by gendered labor, unequal resource access, household relations, place attachment, and constrained coping resources. Effective adaptation must address psychosocial wellbeing alongside livelihoods, care burdens, domestic safety, and accessible community support systems within climate‐exposed coastal and northern communities in Ghana nationally.