The Gulf of Guinea along the West African coast has been subjected to pernicious coastal erosion for several decades. This paper points to the invisible cost of the vanishing coast, the mental health implications. I draw on historical and ethnographic material from Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Nigeria and utilize as framework the recent psychological concepts of solastalgia and allostatic load to illumine how coastal residents experience and talk about loss from coastal erosion. I draw on empirical data from a three-country survey on emotional and mental wellbeing in nine coastal communities conducted in November 2025 by our research cluster on Climate Adaptation in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Nigeria. The data highlighted the emotional and mental health burden of persistent coastal erosion: trauma, anxiety, depression, suicidality, disturbed sleeping patterns of children. A holistic response to coastal erosion and integrated resilience clearly involves not just the construction of sea walls but also mental health support.

Emmanuel Akyeampong is the Ellen Gurney Professor of History and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. He served as the Oppenheimer Faculty Director of the Harvard Center for African Studies from July 2016 to June 2023. Akyeampong is a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (UK). He obtained his PhD in History from the University of Virginia in 1993. Akyeampong is the author and editor of several books and articles, including most recently Independent Africa: The First Generation of Nation Builders (2023). He serves as principal investigator for a Harvard Salata Institute-funded faculty research cluster on Climate Adaptation in the Gulf of Guinea.