Community Social Capital as a Mental Health Lifeline in a Changing Climate: Mechanisms, Opportunities, and Limitations

Climate change is increasing exposure to floods, cyclones, wildfires, and droughts, with growing consequences for anxiety, depression, trauma, and psychosocial wellbeing. Yet disaster responses often prioritize physical infrastructure and formal clinical services, underusing community resources. This conceptual and narrative review examines community‐level social capital as a potential mental health resource in climate‐affected settings. Drawing on social capital theory and the bonding, bridging, and linking typology, alongside community resilience theory, we propose a mechanism model in which social capital influences mental health through perceived social support, belonging, and collective efficacy, strengthening communities’ capacity to absorb and recover from climate shocks. Peer‐reviewed literature and 13 documented community‐based programmes across Africa, Asia, the Pacific, the Caribbean, North America, and Australia were synthesized to illustrate how different forms of social capital operate during cyclones, floods, wildfires, and droughts. The comparative synthesis suggests that bonding‐based interventions, including peer support, communal labour, and grassroots groups, can provide rapid emotional support and strengthen belonging, but may also reproduce exclusion, inequality, and caregiver burden. Interventions that cultivate bridging and linking capital appear better able to connect communities with external institutions, funding, expertise, and health services, particularly where formal systems are weak or overwhelmed. However, prolonged climate stress can deplete community capacity. Community social capital should therefore be treated as a deliberate, equitable, and resourced component of climate‐mental‐health policy, complementing rather than replacing institutional investment.