Climate Change Affects Our Mental Health

There are 1415 blog posts here on climate change, but, up until now, not a single one on the psychological impact it has on our population, i.e., the anxiety and stress it produces. Here’s an article that addresses this phenomenon, quoting experts in the field. 

“Climate change is here; it’s happening,” seems to be the overwhelming sentiment after a summer of heatwaves and historic wildfires that now has, with barely a breath in between, slipped into an early fall marked by severe storms and deadly floods.

Hurricane Florence continues to devastate mid-Atlantic states while Typhoon Mangkhut takes a severe toll on China and the Philippines and has, for now, been named the world’s strongest storm this year. But before the wind and water there was the heat and fire.

Severe wildfires broke out around the world this summer, from the U.S. and Canada to Sweden and Greece. The heatwaves in Europe caused a glacier to melt and a river to evaporate, while wildfires in the western U.S. made the air hazardous to breathe.

It’s intuitively obvious that those who have been through climate-related catastrophes are most directly and immediately affected.  “A recent survey of students in Puerto Rico, for instance, found that more than 7 percent of those polled showed signs of post-traumatic stress disorder following Hurricane Maria. More than 8 percent had symptoms of depression — twice as high as children in non-disaster settings, the researchers said.”

While the connection between climate change and the overall mental health of the population is only just starting to be explored, ThinkProgress spoke with two climate change psychology experts in order to create the article linked above.

Both have noticed an uptick in the number of people expressing fear and uncertainty — and not just among those in the eye of the storm.  “I think that it was below the surface for a long time,” Dr. Lise Van Susteren, a practicing psychologist, told ThinkProgress. “Oftentimes, we can be anxious and not really know that we’re anxious, or we can be anxious and not know why.”  Van Susteren said, “until it’s really in your face, you can continue to repress that anxiety because it’s so uncomfortable. And now, we can’t repress it anymore. It’s right there in our face.”

Increasingly, our culture today is all about ourselves; if it’s not happening to us, we’re generally unconcerned.  As a result, floods that kill thousands and displace millions, or wildfires that consume hundreds of square miles are just part of the news feed.  But perhaps, beneath all this is the nagging worry: am I next?