Ableism, mental health, and environmental change: Critical ecology beyond Western paradigms

This article examines the intersections of ableism, mental health, and environmental change through a critical ecological framework grounded in intersectionality and decolonial thought. Dominant responses to ecological crisis within Western paradigms tend to frame climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution as technical or managerial problems, marginalizing the embodied, psychological, and relational dimensions of ecological harm. Disabled people, neurodivergent individuals, and those experiencing mental distress are disproportionately affected by environmental degradation, yet their experiences and knowledges remain peripheral within environmental theory and policy. Drawing on disability studies, political ecology, and Indigenous and non-Western ecological scholarship, this article argues that ableism functions as a structuring logic within Western ecological paradigms, shaping assumptions about resilience, productivity, adaptation, and value. Through a critical synthesis of interdisciplinary literature and a set of analytical case interventions, this article advances critical ecology as an approach that centers interdependence, vulnerability, and care as ecological principles rather than deficits. It contributes to decolonial ecological debates by demonstrating how disability and mental distress expose the limitations of Western ontologies of control and autonomy and by articulating alternative ecological imaginaries grounded in relational responsibility, collective survival, and epistemic plurality.