OPINION - How does climate change affect our mental health?

- The author is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Center for Global Mental Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in London, UK.

ISTANBUL

Climate change is impacting mental health via multiple pathways. It is leading to more frequent and intense extreme weather events such as storms and floods. These types of extreme weather events can expose people to potentially traumatic events, such as witnessing death or injury. As a result, a minority of people can develop mental health problems such as post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, or substance misuse.

The impacts of climate change on physical health are manyfold. For example, higher temperatures and humidity levels can lead to an increase in climate-sensitive infectious diseases such as dengue fever, malaria, and Zika. Infectious diseases can worsen mental health both as a direct result of hospitalizations or the physical consequences of severe infection as well as indirectly due to the stigma associated with certain infectious diseases.

Higher average temperatures worldwide and exposure to heat waves have been shown to lead to higher levels of psychiatric emergency visits, worsened symptoms among people living with mental health problems, and an increased number of suicides. We do not yet know precisely why we are seeing these effects on mental health, but it may have to do with the negative impact that heat can have on mood and sleep, as well as people taking certain psychotropic medications being more vulnerable in high temperatures.

Additionally, climate change is worsening known social determinants of mental health, such as inequality and food insecurity. For example, farmers may experience poverty as a result of crop failures due to droughts and experience negative mental health as a result.

At the individual level, people are likely to have varying degrees of understanding of what climate change is and how it may be impacting their health. People may experience the mental health consequences of specific events such as floods or heatwaves but not necessarily link these to climate change. This is understandable given that it is complex to attribute individual events to climate change.

The most vulnerable communities

While climate change is a global phenomenon, it does not impact everyone equally around the world. Communities in many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) tend to be both more vulnerable to climate hazards and less equipped to adapt to them, despite being historically the least responsible for the emissions that have driven climate change. This is also the case for the mental health consequences of climate change. Climate change will put additional strain on mental health systems in LMICs, which are already struggling to meet current demand.

Many other groups are likely to be particularly vulnerable to the mental health impacts of climate change, including young people, populations particularly reliant on or connected to the natural world, such as Indigenous communities, and people whose work puts them at higher risk of being exposed to climate hazards, such as outdoor workers and farmers; among many other possible groups that will vary depending on context.

Different types of climatic exposure

Each type of climate exposure will impact people’s mental health in different ways, depending on many factors. Firstly, different types of climatic exposure are likely to impact mental health in different ways. For example, acute events such as extreme weather events are more likely to impact mental health directly by increasing exposure to traumatic events. Conversely, more chronic events, such as droughts, are more likely to impact mental health indirectly by worsening social determinants of mental health, such as poverty.

Secondly, different individuals have different abilities to cope with emerging stressors, and this is the result of complex interactions between many biological, psychological, and social factors. For example, people with pre-existing severe mental health problems such as psychosis may be particularly affected by extreme weather events or other climate hazards. Finally, climatic events will have different impacts on mental health depending on the context in which they happen. For example, a heatwave will have different impacts on people living with anxiety or depression depending on whether they live in an air-conditioned apartment versus an uninsulated house in a slum.

Solutions

The first solution to prevent the negative impacts of climate change on mental health is to mitigate climate change by reducing the amount of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. Currently, our main available strategy to do this is by significantly cutting down our burning of fossil fuels. Various mitigation activities can have multiple co-benefits for health, including mental health. For example, shifting to a more active mode of transport where possible can have benefits for mental health, given the positive relationship between physical exercise and mental health.

However, even if we implemented all the needed changes to mitigate climate change now, we would still need to adapt to the consequences that climate change is having now. There are various existing evidence-based interventions that can effectively address many mental health problems. These span across biological, psychological, social, and digital interventions. However, we need more research testing how resilient these interventions can be when implemented in contexts affected by climate change. For example, we may need to start thinking about psychotropic medications that have less substantial impacts on bodily thermoregulation or about psychological interventions that could be scaled in settings affected by adversity.

In conclusion, climate change is already impacting mental health on many fronts, from extreme weather events to increasing temperatures. These impacts are not equally distributed but are impacting those who have historically been marginalized the most. Climate change will impact mental health differently depending on different individuals’ biological, psychological, and social characteristics as well as the context in which they live. To prevent these negative impacts, we urgently need to mitigate climate change now as well as put in place appropriate adaptation measures to safeguard mental health in an already changing climate.

*Opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Anadolu