ReviewBiology2026
Heat, Brain, and Mental Health: Biological Mechanisms Underlying Climate-Related Psychiatric Outcomes.
Review in Biology, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Heat exposure is an increasingly important climate-related determinant of mental health, yet the biological mechanisms linking heat to psychiatric outcomes remain insufficiently integrated. This narrative review synthesizes evidence from climate medicine, thermoregulation, neuroscience, psychoneuroimmunology, sleep research, psychopharmacology, epidemiology, and psychiatry to examine how acute and chronic heat exposure may influence mental health. Heat acts as a multi-system biological stressor by challenging thermoregulation, increasing autonomic and cardiovascular strain, disrupting hydration, impairing sleep and circadian rhythms, activating stress-response systems, and contributing to neuroinflammation, oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, blood-brain barrier disruption, and neurotransmitter alterations. These pathways may interact with psychotropic medication exposure and impaired behavioral thermoregulation, particularly among people with severe mental illness, older adults, individuals receiving lithium, people with cognitive impairment, substance use disorders, outdoor workers, and those living in poorly cooled environments. Heat-related psychiatric vulnerability is therefore transdiagnostic but heterogeneous, with relevance to distress, depression, anxiety, mood instability, psychosis, substance-related crises, cognitive dysfunction, delirium, and suicide-related outcomes. The review also distinguishes pathways supported by stronger human evidence from mechanisms supported mainly by experimental, preclinical, severe-spectrum, or indirect evidence. It proposes an integrative biological model and an evidence-informed translational agenda focused on exposure assessment, biomarkers, sleep and circadian monitoring, medication safety, risk prediction, physiological adaptation, heat-mitigation strategies, heat-health action plans, and implementation-oriented evaluation.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.