The hidden toll of climate disasters
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The hidden toll of climate disasters
Most climate-related mental health challenges don’t come from “doom-and-gloom” rhetoric. They come from climate change itself.
If you look around the news and social media, you’ll find that many discussions on climate change and mental health have focused on eco-anxiety, and the problem with doom-and-gloom rhetoric.
Defined as "a chronic fear of environmental doom," eco-anxiety or climate anxiety has been documented to be on the rise, particularly among young people. As a result, “A growing number of researchers, activists and mental health professionals are now urging those in the climate movement to embrace more hope and adopt a softer tone,” according to Inside Climate News.
Conversations like these have been welcome and necessary–especially because the notion that we’re “doomed” is just false.
But new data indicates that, when it comes to mental health and climate change, it’s not enough to place the blame on “tone.” Because a striking number of people experiencing climate-related mental health challenges are not reacting to fear of the future. They’re reacting to the trauma of the present.
The rise of “climate trauma”
Earlier this year, the Climate Council of Australia released a national survey on the mental health impacts of living through climate-fueled weather disasters. The results were staggering.
Not only did 80 percent of Australians report experiencing an extreme weather event since 2019; but nearly a third of those people reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder because of it. An overwhelming 73 percent reported experiencing anxiety after living through a climate-fueled disaster. Almost half experienced depression.
The reason for these mental health symptoms varied from financial to existential. “When there is a storm now and very heavy rain I feel anxious–panicky and stressed, hypervigilant, and also a sense of foreboding dread,” one Queensland resident told the Climate Council. Another anonymous parent said that, even with a raised home built to withstand floods, extreme flooding in Lismore, New South Wales killed their family pets and destroyed their house.
“My life has completely changed, my son and I are still displaced with no hope in sight for what our future will become,” the parent said.
These survey results add to an increasingly large body of evidence of the extreme mental health challenges of experiencing climate change. One study suggests that a whopping 30 to 40 percent of people who survive natural disasters develop PTSD. Some experts argue this phenomenon deserves its own term: “climate trauma.”
The first study of the long-term effects of climate trauma found that disasters have long-term cognitive effects on survivors’ brains. Researchers found that survivors of California’s 2018 Camp Fire who suffered personal loss had higher levels of PTSD and depression than people who witnessed the event.
In a follow-up study, published last month, the researchers found that the same group of people reporting climate trauma had more trouble processing information and making decisions, as well as chronic mental health problems—many years after the event.
“How humans experience and mentally deal with climate catastrophes sets the stage for our future lives,” the study authors wrote.
Climate anxiety alone is not a mental health disorder
Climate anxiety experienced by those who haven’t lived through a climate disaster is no less real, and no less valid, than the climate anxiety experienced by those who have. Much of the research on mental health doesn’t differentiate between anxiety and depression caused by the news versus anxiety and depression caused by a natural disaster. Anxiety is anxiety, regardless of its origin.
But the fact is, much of the climate anxiety we spend so much time trying to prevent, while distressing, is normal. Many experts don’t consider it a mental health disorder—rather, they say it is a reasonable emotional reaction to the real threat of climate change.
This was cemented in a landmark study of 10,000 young people across the world, which found that 75 percent of people ages 18 to 25 think the future is frightening. That study mainstreamed the concept of climate anxiety. “One is to understand that it is a healthy and normal response to feel distressed about the climate crisis,” study author Britt Wray told Smithsonian Magazine. “It’s not a pathology. It’s not a mental health disorder. It’s a sign that you care and are attached to what’s going on in the world.”
The PTSD, depression, and anxiety that often arise from experiencing climate trauma, however, are mental health disorders. And they deserve just as much, if not more, attention than the effects of scary headlines and social media—particularly because of the communities that are disproportionately suffering from it.
The importance of mainstreaming climate trauma
Climate anxiety and climate trauma can affect anyone. But it doesn’t impact every community equally. Many communities that report the highest level of climate anxiety are those who are disproportionately experiencing it, including Indigenous peoples, young people, and vulnerable communities around the world.
This is something that the conversation about climate-related mental health issues often misses. “We very rarely find anyone talking about how people in Ghana or the Philippines feel about climate change,” University of Nottingham professor Charles Ogunbode told Grist.
But these are the people most affected by climate anxiety. For example: in the study of 10,000 young people, those living in the Global South were most likely to report feeling frightened of the future, including Brazil (86 percent), India (80 percent), Nigeria (70 percent), and the Philippines (92 percent). People in countries that are poorer, or more directly impacted by climate change (like extreme wildfires in Portugal) also expressed more worry.
The disproportionate effects go beyond anxiety, too. In India, which has been wracked by deadly heatwaves, a recent study found that people who experienced higher temperatures by only one degree Celsius had a 24 percent higher likelihood of both depression and anxiety.
It’s not surprising that this inequity is felt in mental health; after all, those who contribute the least to climate change, including developing countries, are hit first and hardest. “These same patterns of inequity and injustice apply when it comes to the impacts upon mental wellbeing,” reports the Climate Council.
This week’s newsletter was heavy, so I wanted to include some mental health resources at the end of it. I waded through many expert recommendations for climate anxiety, including joining a climate action group or taking nature walks. But I like science-backed solutions, and the scientific literature only points to two proven solutions: Find a community to share it with. Practice mindfulness.
Resources:
Many of these suggestions come from Britt Wray’s Resources for working with climate emotions, which I highly recommend reading for a full list. Below are a selected few:
Mindfulness apps: Calm, Headspace, Insight Timer
Group support resources:
Climate Awakening: A small group sharing & listening session about the climate emergency.
The Good Grief Network: Peer support network for processing climate grief
All We Can Save Project: Resources that nurture the climate community
Eco-Anxious Stories: A creative collaborative space that aims to normalize eco-anxiety through stories
Climate mental health groups:
Further reading:
The next climate battle in the courts is over mental health. Grist, July 2022.
Key quote: “What also makes the Arctic oil case remarkable is that, along with the Portuguese lawsuit, it cites climate anxiety alongside physical impacts to support its claims that the youths’ fundamental rights are breached by government policies.”
“It’s destroying me”: Storm after storm, climate change increases strain on Texans’ mental health. The Texas Tribune, September 2022.
Key quote: “Yet studies have found that only a small proportion of disaster survivors receive mental health care. And getting help in Texas is especially difficult — Mental Health America ranked Texas last in the nation for access to mental health care in 2022. Communities of color have even fewer options for help with climate-related trauma than predominantly white neighborhoods.”
Disasters are driving a mental health crisis. The Center for Public Integrity, August 2020.
Key quote: “Though disasters always impact mental health, states don’t automatically get the funding. Wildfires often aren’t deemed large enough to qualify. When events do pass the magic threshold, states must complete long applications justifying the need. Iowa’s most recent request, for instance, ran 168 pages.”Lessons on Resistance From a Child of the First Climate-Change Generation. The Nation, December 2022.
Key quote: “I learned that it wasn’t my business to predict the future. My job was to do my best today to make a better tomorrow. In other words, I couldn’t control the future, but I could control what I would contribute to it, and who I was going to be and how I was going to face it. That message stuck, and I go back to it again and again today.”
Catch of the Day: Today’s delightful distractions are courtesy of reader Mark, who sent us a baby picture of his Siamese(ish) cats Poppy (left) and Piper. These snuggle bugs love to climb up the back of the couch and looking out the window from their home in Maryland.
Want to see your furry (or non-furry!) friend in HEATED? Send a picture and some words to catchoftheday@heated.world.
The hidden toll of climate disasters
Great coverage of this topic, Emily and associates. I want to add that anxiety also comes directly to those who have spent their lives in nature, observing and studying. Scientists as well as non-scientists. I have been observing/tracking changes in my own region for more than 40 years (some of that as a professional and some simply in my personal life). Even people who don’t consciously track invasive species, bud burst, changing bird populations, etc., can sense that something is amiss. We don’t need the headlines and gloom news to tell us. We actually feel it in our bodies. Just wanted to make this point. And yes, mindfulness practice is very helpful.
YES. This article is so thought-provoking and important! This is why I love supporting you.