“The incidences of mental and social disorders will rise steeply. These will include depressive and anxiety disorders, post traumatic stress disorders, substance abuse, suicides, and widespread outbreaks of violence. Children, the poor, the elderly, and those with existing mental health disorders are especially vulnerable and will be hardest hit.”
As our world begins to unravel, the American people are becoming increasingly alarmed as more overwhelming evidence linking our use of fossil fuels to climate change disasters becomes obvious. Almost daily, we read news stories and watch video of horrific worldwide weather events that have been fueled by climate change (for some inexplicable reason the press will not mention the word climate change anymore then my Governor Rick Scott does). Greenhouses gases, have already provided us 14 of the 15 hottest years since 2000. For comparison purposes the last time we set a global record cold temperature for the year was in 1911. Severe drought, catastrophic melt in the arctic, forest fires, tundra fires, flooding rains, dying tropical rainforests, bleaching of our corals, heat waves, disease, pestilence, stronger and stronger storms and elevated storm surge is what we have witnessed with our own two eyes. And let’s not forget that winter is here. President Obama nails it: "We're the first generation to feel the impact of climate change and the last generation that can do something about it." "There is such a thing as being too late when it comes to climate change."
We have every reason to be alarmed because natural disasters and extreme weather events will strike many places that are densely populated. "50 per cent of our population live in coastal regions exposed to storms and sea level rise, 70 per cent of Americans live in cities prone to heat waves; major inland cities lie along rivers that will swell to record heights, and the fastest growing part of the nation is the increasingly arid West.” We can expect the following mental disorders to follow extreme weather events.
Violence: “Research from Iowa State shows that, as the temperature rises, so does the incidence of violence.” This could be exacerbated as communities and cultures are split up, relocated and potentially find themselves in conflict with their hosts. Witness the violence in Houston in the years following Hurricane Katrina; displaced families from NOLA were sent to Texas.
Displacement Stress: The report emphasises the effects immediate and sometimes long-term displacement can have on people following flooding.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: Major disasters and witnessing the death of loved ones as a result can lead to PTSD.
Despair: “The unrelenting day by day despair of watching and waiting for water that doesn’t come will have a singularly damaging impact on the psyche of the people who have depended on Mother Nature’s rainfall for their livelihood.”
Anxiety: “Persistent psychological stress is common, with anxiety reactions recurring from unavoidable re-exposure to the odours, smoke and ash [of wildfires].”
Fear: “Higher temperatures favour the formation of ozone which triggers asthma attacks. Anyone who has asthma and parents of children with asthma are familiar with the fears this illness engenders. People die from untreated asthma. Many other fears linked to disease are harder to nail down. As malaria and dengue fever and other infectious diseases march northward due to warmer temperatures, inchoate fears of threat and vulnerability drift into people’s consciousness. This will be compounded by a growing number of sensational media reports tied to disease outbreaks and public health warnings.”
Anger: “With increasing media coverage educating people about the causes of climate change and the ensuing extreme weather events and other disasters, we can expect more powerful and troubling responses to human-caused climate disasters than when disasters were previously experienced as natural or acts of God.”
The above conditions are highlighted in a study titled, The Psychological Effects of Global Warming on the United States: And Why the U.S. Mental Health Care System Is Not Adequately Prepared, published by the World Wildlife Foundation. It warns that the majority of Americans, as well as the rest of the world, will suffer from mental health problems due to impacts from climate change. The report concludes that our health system is incapable of dealing with the emotional and mental stress that we will endure.
Summer heat waves: the physical distress arising from prolonged heat waves is well known. What is not widely known is the psychological distress that is caused by higher temperatures, and, in particular, the relationship between rising temperature and aggression. Research from Iowa State shows that, as the temperature rises, so does the incidence of violence. (DeLisi 2010)
• Coastal and river flooding: the direct adverse effects of flooding are obvious, but these weather and climate related events are especially likely to lead to psychic injury from the stress of displacement, loss of possessions (including pets), and uncertainty about interim and future housing and employment.
• High impact and more intense storms: the far-reaching consequences of destructive weather saw its prototype in Hurricane Katrina. The Hurricane scattered residents of New Orleans all across the U.S. It shattered a culture, broke up families, spiked outbursts of outrage and blame at a government that was slow to respond, and lead to a jump in violence in at least one city that took them in (Houston). Six years later New Orleans has yet to fully recover, and many of the victims have experienced post-incident stress and post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD). Their shaken confidence in institutions and government is less quantifiable but also potentially damaging especially as a cumulative effect over time.
• Severe drought and reduced snow pack: the unrelenting day by day despair of watching and waiting for water that doesn’t come will have a singularly damaging impact on the psyche of the people who have depended on Mother Nature’s rainfall for their livelihood. Already underway is a 21st century dust bowl in Australia that has spawned a growing population of desperate migrants. Texas has recently experienced a drought (with accompanying wildfires) the likes of which has not been seen in more than 50 years.
• Increased large-scale wildfires: raging wildfires are incredibly dangerous and have a particularly savage effect on our psyches by devastating landscapes, wiping out homes and possessions, incinerating wildlife and clogging the air with pollutants that sicken people locally and can travel hundreds of miles to sicken people at a distance. Persistent psychological stress is common, with anxiety reactions recurring from unavoidable re-exposure to the odors, smoke and ash.
In an excerpt from Per Espen Stoknes’ The Great Grief: How to cope with losing our world, the author makes note of climate change being “a complex and intimidating threat. You can't see it when you look out your bedroom window. Its impacts are often not immediately noticeable, nor are the benefits of acting against it."
I have been through several hurricanes and have felt firsthand the stress, anxiety, fear, confusion and anger that comes with a violent storm and its aftermath of insufferable heat, lack of availability of food and potable water. To be perfectly honest, I don’t handle stress well. I vomit a lot. I live in dread that another storm will come and shatter my safe space into a million pieces once again and I weep with empathy when I see others going through a similar process. I follow the climate issue religiously and I know that is not healthy for me. I get depressed often, I self medicate, I can’t sleep and I experience a sadness at times that is so intense that it is difficult for me to even begin to describe. I keep vigil, and I meditate, it seems to ease the sorrow that it has come to this.
This more-than-personal sadness is what I call the “Great Grief”—a feeling that rises in us as if from the Earth itself. Perhaps bears and dolphins, clear-cut forests, fouled rivers, and the acidifying, plastic-laden oceans bear grief inside them, too, just as we do. Every piece of climate news increasingly comes with a sense of dread: is it too late to turn around? The notion that our individual grief and emotional loss can actually be a reaction to the decline of our air, water, and ecology rarely appears in conversation or the media. It may crop up as fears about what kind of world our sons or daughters will face. But where do we bring it? Some bring it privately to a therapist. It is as if this topic is not supposed to be publicly discussed.
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In order to respond adequately, we may need to mourn these losses. Insufficient mourning keeps us numb or stuck in anger at them, which only feeds the cultural polarization. But for this to happen, the presence of supportive voices and models are needed. It is far harder to get acceptance of our difficulty and despair, and to mourn without someone else’s explicit affirmation and empathy. Contact with the pain of the world, however, does not only bring grief but can also open the heart to reach out to all things still living. It holds the potential to break open the psychic numbing. Maybe there is also community to be found among like-hearted people, among those who also can admit they’ve been touched by this “Great Grief,” feeling the Earth’s sorrow, each in their own way. Not just individual mourning is needed, but a shared process that leads onwards to public re-engagement in cultural solutions. Working out our own answers as honestly as we can, as individuals and as communities, is rapidly becoming a requirement for psychological health. To cope with losing our world requires us to descend through the anger into mourning and sadness, not speedily bypass them to jump onto the optimism bandwagon or escape into indifference. And with this deepening, an extended caring and gratitude may open us to what is still here, and finally, to acting accordingly.