Climate change is contributing to an increase in frequency and severity of extreme weather events (EWEs), which have a sizable impact on mental health and wellbeing. We sought to comprehensively synthesize measures of mental health impact used in the literature following EWEs.

This scoping review searched eight databases from 2017 to September 2024 to identify primary research studies that measured and reported mental health outcomes following EWEs. We categorized findings to describe a) which EWEs were most heavily studied, b) which mental health outcomes appeared more or less frequently, c) which measures of mental health impact were employed, and d) evidence gaps.

We screened 3,689 studies and included 154 studies from 29 countries, 15 (51.7%) of which were low- and middle-income countries. Studies reporting mental health outcomes were most commonly investigating the impact of 11 types of EWEs. We identified 188 mental health outcomes and 130 measures of mental health impact. Mental health outcomes were most commonly evaluated in studies investigating the impact of floods (n = 41), extreme heat/heatwaves (n = 32) and wildfires (n = 28). The most frequently evaluated mental health outcomes were post-traumatic stress disorder (n = 62), depression (n = 39) and anxiety (n = 27). The most commonly used measure of mental health impact was International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) codes.

This scoping review provides a global overview of current reporting practices and supports the need for standardization to enable global comparisons and decision-making.