Mental health and climate change
It’s accepted that mental health and climate change are the most significant issues facing all countries globally. The relation between the common causes of these two issues has received little attention. Global health leaders, such as the World Health Organization, agree that “the climate crisis is a health crisis.
Recent reports from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicate that the health effects of global temperatures rising are harmful. While the negative effects of climate change on physical health are well-known, the effects on mental health have received less attention; in fact, the number of relevant studies and policy briefings on the topic has only grown recently.
There are hundreds of different ways in which climate change is linked to mental health.
Therefore, it’s necessary to value the contributions from other disciplines to make the hidden benefits of climate action concrete and the hidden costs of climate change on mental health and emotional wellness.
Exploring the challenges and opportunities of attribution
The difficulty in assigning blame is a common reason for the lack of focus on the relationship between mental health and climate change. In this context, attribution refers to the scientific correlation that exists between greenhouse gas emissions and variations in the weather, as well as between the impacts of climate change on the weather and mental health.
The literature that demonstrates the causal connections between extreme weather occurrences and climate change is becoming more abundant.
Key challenges of attributing climate change to mental health
Four major factors make it difficult to assign blame for the relationship between climate change and mental health: first, there’s a chance that common, transitory distress responses to unusual events will be pathologized, and this could lead to an underdiagnosis of the effects of a changing climate on mental health; second, there are many possible outcomes that could result from climate change and mental health.
psychological effects of climate-related tragedies
Stress-related psychiatric problems are frequently linked to climate-related disasters like hurricanes, bushfires, and floods. People who have been in situations where their lives are in danger are significantly more likely to acquire posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Increased arousal, flashbacks to the incident, and avoidance of triggers that evoke memories of the event are signs of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The emergence of PTSD symptoms can sometimes be delayed, occurring months or even years after being exposed to a potentially catastrophic event. Significant subjective suffering and a decline in life quality are linked to the development of PTSD.
Individuals who have gone through a natural disaster linked to climate change are more likely to develop acute stress reaction and adjustment disorder in addition to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). These conditions are on the anxiety spectrum, and they can get better with time and/or rehabilitation. The onset of acute and transitory psychosis and the recurrence of bipolar illness are two other conditions that are aggravated by stress.
The depression is likely to be more pronounced in those who live in small rural communities The depression is likely to be more pronounced in those who live in small rural communities than in those living in big cities.
When a person experiences the loss of their home, surroundings, social networks, and loved ones, they may experience depression or mourning. The depression is probably going to be more severe for people who reside in tiny rural areas. Those who live in tiny rural towns are probably going to experience the depression more severely than people who reside in large cities. Given that the effects of climate change appear to be growing over time, it stands to reason that a larger percentage of people will be affected by the negative effects of climate change-related disasters on mental health.
