What happens when climate change and the mental-health crisis collide?
Climate Change Injustice and Mental Health: How Cultural Practice and Environment Impact Climate Anxiety in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities
The research showed that there was a seam of climate injustice. Young people are likely to experience the greatest mental burden from climate change that older generations have caused. Poverty, illness or inequalities are some of the things that can cause a person to be at risk of poor mental health. The founder of a Lagos, Nigeria-based environmental group feels that climate change is making poorer people feel worse.
Medical student Vashti-Eve Burrows, meanwhile, saw powerful hurricane Dorian rage through the Bahamas in 2019 and now she is fearful about the future of the country, an island archipelago that is vulnerable to sea-level rise and storms. Will there be a Bahamas within the next 20 to 30 years? she says.
Mental illness is getting worse due to the warming planet. The scale of the problem is what researchers need to work out.
Studies suggest people with existing mental health issues are more at risk of dying in extreme heat than others, but understanding why is and what we can do to stop it is really unexplored Some drugs can interfere with the body’s response to heat.
Feelings of eco-anxiety aren’t necessarily a sign of something being wrong. “If you are under immediate threat, it is a realistic, rational, healthy survival instinct to react by being anxious or to experience fear,” says Elizabeth Marks, a clinical psychologist at the University of Bath, UK, and one of the survey’s lead authors. It could even be harmful to think of these feelings as a disorder. “If we think of it as a diagnosable condition, that risks placing the blame on the individual as having an unhealthy response,” she says. That said, some people might become so impaired by their eco-distress that they would benefit from psychological help.
Another question researchers have is how context and culture affect climate anxiety. Some studies have shown that “connection to country” — through cultural practices such as hunting and gathering food — is important to the mental health and well-being of some Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islander communities8, says Michelle Dickson, who studies the mental health of Indigenous Australians at the University of Sydney, Australia. But rising sea levels, drought and bushfires threaten those practices. Tools used in health-care settings tend to not take into account the cultural values that underpin Indigenous mental health, according to a Darkinjin/Ngarigo Australian Aboriginal.
Wamaitha, who along with Burrows is one of many people who shared their experiences with Connecting Climate Minds, has turned some of her concerns into action. She quit farming last year after trying and failing to grow weather-resistant crops, and is now working at a non-government organization in Bura,Kenya focused on poverty relief. She is earning enough to study for a master’s degree in public health, and she raises awareness of global health on the social-networking site LinkedIn. She is concerned about the future as well as how she will have children. “I don’t think I am in a good environment to be able to bring kids into this particular place,” she says. When I think about it, that is the worst thing.
Burrows, who is studying medicine at the University of the West Indies in Saint Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago, says she chooses to be positive and does small things to help the environment, such as walking instead of driving. She says that she prays that wealthy countries and companies “will really, truly understand what is happening and not just say smooth words to try to pacify us in the moment”. She says they should help the smaller countries and the world at large.
At the same time, it must also be recognized that world leaders’ inaction is a cause of distress — and action by governments is what is needed to soothe it.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities are likely to experience the greatest mental burden from climate change that older generations have caused, a study said. Poverty, illness or inequalities are some of the things that can cause people to be at risk of poor mental health, the study added. However, understand why is and what we can do to stop it, it further said.