Climate Change Impacts: Mental Health

After reading the few most recent chapters of "The Ministry for the Future", I have been deeply interested by Frank's life after the India Heat Wave. Mental health is a very broad topic, but it is something my interests reside in. I want to take a moment and discuss the impacts that climate change currently has on mental health.  

Stress, anxiety, and trauma are three very real issues that most people experience at some point in their lives. The increasing temperatures and worsened severity and frequency of natural disasters is going to (and already is) take a massive psychological toll on human's mental states. 

Because of climate change, people are losing homes, jobs, and even families. Often times, people are displaced due to severe weather events. An example of this would be, back in 2018, the California Camp Fire, 67% of individuals that were directly exposed experienced trauma PTSD. What is even more shocking is that people who are indirectly exposed to severe weather events can also harbor different types of trauma. 14% of the individuals who were indirectly exposed to the California Camp Fire also suffered trauma exposure.

  

More than two-thirds of US adults have expressed some sort of anxiety related feelings towards even just the subject of climate change. The issue with this is that most people are anxious about climate change, yet only 4 in 10 individuals have not made changes in their behavior to aim to help reduce climate change according to the American Psychological Association. 

In the book, Frank experienced something that most cannot even fathom when he was in India. Because of his experience he sustained a lot of trauma that completely altered his psychological wellbeing. This is real and can happen. Research says that with increased global temperatures, we should expect to see more aggressive and criminal behaviors due to psychological exhaustion. Along with aggression, we could see a disastrous increase in mental health disorders such as mood disorders, anxiety disorders, as well as dementia even. 

One statistic I found interesting yet worrisome, was the correlation between drought and farmer suicide. Economic hardships are costing lives due to these droughts that are only projected to get worse as time goes on. Droughts have unfortunately increased farmer suicide by 19%.  This correlation was found through studies of suicide related deaths of farmers throughout drought season.

 

There is so much more I could dive into about this topic, but I think that this is enough depressing statistics for now. We need to not only worry about how climate change will affect us physically, but also mentally.