“Climate change affects every aspect of our health and well-being.”
This is the opening statement of a paper published in The Conversation last November, which describes the accelerating harmful stresses caused by what I call the climate, ecosystem and biodiversity (CEB) catastrophe. and explains how disasters affect mental health in five ways, with a particular focus on alcohol. and drug abuse. The five methods include:
- The direct impact on mental health caused by extreme weather events, such as extreme heat waves, is associated with increased distress for the entire population.
- Indirect effects on mental health resulting from increased worry, anxiety, guilt, fear, anger, and feelings of helplessness about what will happen in the future. It affects many people, especially young people.
- Physical injury, such as smoke inhalation from wildfires, and psychological distress caused by long-term illness, disability, or other chronic health problems that cause depression and feelings of hopelessness.
- Mental and physical stress caused by subtle and obvious changes in daily life, such as disrupted sleep patterns due to heat, or prolonged droughts or large-scale disasters that force people to leave their homes and regions. .
- and the destabilization of the ecological, social, architectural, economic, and geopolitical systems on which people depend for food, water, jobs, income, shelter, safety, security, and other basic survival needs. widespread suffering caused by.
As this post highlights, these traumatic stressors and the many other climate-induced hardships not mentioned affect everyone, at different times, in different ways, and on different scales. Masu.
Last week, it was announced that global temperatures had surpassed the 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) year-round threshold, the highest temperature in the past 12 months. And heating is accelerating and can become self-sustaining.
We must recognize the fact that humanity is in the early stages of a rapidly accelerating civilization-altering event that is creating multiple interacting traumatic stresses. Without significant changes in the way we respond, stressors will have a major impact on everyone’s social, psychological, emotional and behavioral health.
However, the dominant paradigm in the mental health field today is that individuals are solely responsible for their psychological, emotional, and behavioral conflicts. The root of their problems lies only within themselves. Therefore, the appropriate response is to primarily provide mental health services one person at a time to individuals experiencing symptoms.
Assume that the privatization of mental health issues is correct. How is it possible that psychological, emotional, and behavioral problems continue to grow in the United States and other countries, reaching current epidemic levels?Individual genetic problems are on the rise Is it simply because alcohol and drugs are more readily available? Not likely.
The reality is that the growing mental health and psychosocial problems seen across the United States and internationally are in large part caused by a host of traumatic stresses that include, but extend far beyond, individual factors. .
Socioecological models provide a useful way to think about cumulative stressors.
individual factors: Each person’s mental health is certainly influenced by the genetic/biological factors they are born with and their early life experiences, including their relationships with their parents and primary caregivers. For example, when children experience neglect or abuse, they can develop mental and physical health problems that can persist into adulthood.
Interpersonal factors:However, we humans are social creatures. We are all embedded in a circle of relationships with family, friends, and neighbors that influence how we see the world and ourselves. Mental health problems can arise when these relationships pressure people to conform to certain ways of thinking or behaving, or isolate, punish, or stigmatize people who look, think, or act differently. there is.
community factors: These relationships are heavily influenced by the norms, values, and practices of the organizations with which people interact within physical communities (or online). This may include religious institutions, civic organizations, clubs, schools, businesses, child care, health care, and other organizations.
The types of jobs available, the quality of housing and transportation, communication methods such as social media, and other conditions in the communities in which people live, work, and reproduce can also have a significant impact on mental health. Many of these factors combine to create greater social isolation and loneliness, which are major contributors to today’s mental health struggles.
structural factors: Communities are heavily influenced by the norms, values, and practices mandated by local, state, and national policies and regulations, but in the United States they are mostly influenced by the most economically and politically It is made to meet the interests of the people. Power.
For example, the huge economic disparities and stagnation in inflation-adjusted incomes that affect many people today are the result of policies aimed at siphoning wealth from ordinary people to corporations and the ultra-rich. I am. These policies leave many people feeling economically and socially marginalized and have harmful social, psychological, emotional and behavioral consequences.
environmental factors: All these factors are greatly influenced by the environmental conditions in which people exist. This includes topography and food and water conditions, open space, forests, waterways, grasslands, biodiversity and other ecological factors. For example, polluted air and water can cause mental health problems.
The five contributors to mental health problems resulting from the CEB disaster described at the outset exacerbate all these stressors and add many new ones. One of the cumulative effects is short-term and long-term violence that affects the social, psychological, emotional, and behavioral state of families, communities, and society as a whole.
In summary, socioecological models reveal that, except in rare cases, no single factor is responsible for the majority of mental health and psychosocial conflicts. To borrow an old Lakota proverb, our health and well-being are the product of “all our relationships.”
Rather than continuing to place responsibility for psychological, emotional, and behavioral problems solely on individuals, the entire population is already experiencing, or will soon experience, suffering caused by multiple interacting stressors. We must recognize that.
We do more than just treat individual individuals with symptoms, we work to strengthen and maintain the capacity of all adults, adolescents, and young children to maintain social, psychological, and emotional well-being in the face of adversity. You must actively support others to participate in activities to achieve this goal. This requires the use of a public health approach to mental health and transformational resilience.
A public health approach focuses on the entire population, not just individuals who are considered at risk or who are already showing symptoms of a problem. and prioritizing the prevention of mental health and psychosocial problems.
Population-level prevention is achieved by actively engaging neighborhood and community members in activities that strengthen protective factors, including social support networks, local resources and services, and resilience skills. These elements help relieve them from severe stress and trauma and make them available. We use adversity as a catalyst to find constructive new sources of meaning, purpose, and hope in our lives.
Many programs are doing cutting-edge work in this area. For example, the North Carolina Healthy and Resilient Communities Initiative has 50 multidisciplinary community collaboratives working or developing to build mental health and resilience. Another great example is the Community Resilience Initiative in Walla Walla, Washington. And the Neighborhood Resilience Project in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, uses trauma-informed community development to achieve its goals. Many other initiatives are underway.
In many regions, public health approaches to mental health and transformational resilience are also incorporating group- and community-based healing approaches into prevention strategies to help people recover after experiencing severe trauma. .
Many organizations offer effective ways to accomplish this task. The community resilience model developed by the Trauma Resource Institute is a great example. The Center for Body-Mind Medicine offers another way to reduce trauma and increase resilience. Integrative community therapy, advanced by the Visible Hands Collaborative, offers yet another effective approach.
Individual mental health services remain very important when these group and community-oriented healing methods are utilized. But they are just one element of her more comprehensive holistic approach.
To prevent and heal the widespread social, psychological, emotional, and behavioral struggles that the CEB catastrophe is rapidly inundating us with, we must deprivatize mental health and “involve all of our relationships.” ” must be addressed. We must respond from a population and community perspective, not an individual perspective.
