Research in the area of climate change and mental health is increasing but the field remains disconnected, unequal and siloed (Box 1). The Connecting Climate Minds project, funded by Wellcome, aims to address this by cultivating a connected, supported and engaged community of practice on a global scale to create an actionable research agenda on climate change and mental health. The impact of climate change on mental health has been noted by a small pool of academics and practitioners for more than a decade. Publications have advocated for systems thinking approaches that join the dots between temperature rises and chronic and extreme weather events with disaster mental health literature. Researchers and advocates have pointed to the effects of resulting disruptions to health systems, food and water security, cultures and livelihoods on the global mental health burden1. The Lancet commission on global mental health and sustainable development noted in 2018 that climate change threatened work towards creating an environment that fosters mental health and wellbeing for all. However, until recently, research explicitly identified at the ‘climate change and mental health’ nexus remained relatively scant. A 2021 review of literature explicitly on climate change and mental health found only 120 papers, with the first being published in 2007. Similarly, another review noted that although a search of PubMed for the decade to 2021 returns 54,875 papers for ‘climate change’ and 284,055 for ‘mental health’, only 478 are returned for both terms.