Human-caused climate change is now affecting everyone around the world. The health impact is tracked, focusing on physical health. Tracking the mental health impacts of climate change is much more difficult. No long-term, global indicators have proven strong.
Attribution tracking
Physical health and mental health are linked, suggesting the prospect of finding physical health outcomes based on mental health conditions affected by human-caused climate change. The reverse can also be explored: mental health outcomes emerge from physical health impacts. One important hurdle is ensuring the attribution of specific climate change trends to physical health outcomes and then to mental health conditions—or vice versa.
Atlantic and Caribbean hurricanes are becoming stronger while decreasing in number due to human-caused climate change. Where the wind and the risk of flooding do not subside before a storm, disaster can result, with people injured and killed, homes leveled, and lives upended. Being injured or having friends and family killed or injured, as well as disruption of life, livelihood, and home, of course can lead to depression, anxiety, stress, and more.
The first attribution challenge is that no storm should produce a disaster. The key is to reduce the risk of wind and flooding ahead of a storm. If people are able to do so, and have the knowledge and encouragement, then they can survive the storm with little damage or with rapid reconstruction, ensuring few serious health consequences. Negative mental health impacts arising from hurricanes should not occur, regardless of how human-caused climate change affects this storm or other weather.
An exception related to the weather can be heat-humidity. Human-caused climate change has produced extreme heat-humidity episodes beyond what humans have experienced. Calculations begin to show the percentage of heat wave deaths that can be attributed to human-caused climate change.
Doing the same for mental health impacts may not be too far-fetched. There is no doubt that excess heat-humidity impairs brain function. But how many effects of heat on different people and in different contexts, and their possible mental health impact, are mapped?
Livelihood impact is another factor. Farmers, among others, must work outside. Too often, they face the choice of risking their lives in the heat and humidity or losing their income. The latter may have happened, as plants withered and livestock died in the hot humidity. The evidence remains anecdotal, but in locations experiencing unbearable heat and humidity, the increase in farmer suicides seems to be related to these weather conditions, and the lack of support and coping mechanisms.
Lack of data
Statements about correlation and causation should be cautioned for the moment because of a major challenge in tracking mental health outcomes: the lack of consistent, robust data. There is a difference between an emotional trough and a diagnosable mental health condition. Some may explain that they are anxious, stressed, or depressed when considering suicide. It does not necessarily mean that they have a formal mental health diagnosis that requires treatment.
And no matter what type or level of mental health condition, not everyone can examine or fix their condition. Many do not have access to mental health services, or those services are under-resourced and staffed are overburdened and poorly trained.
Access to mental health services is not just about availability, including proximity and time to get there, but also about affordability. Even in places with ostensibly free, universal healthcare, the individual may have to pay for a prescription or specialist follow-up and monitoring. Free universal healthcare usually focuses on response, waiting for obvious mental health conditions to emerge, rather than supporting prevention or continuous monitoring.
Underreporting of mental health conditions is usually considered due to fear of being labeled and ostracised. Overreporting mental health conditions may be from people exaggerating symptoms or not being clear about what they are experiencing, perhaps getting sick leave from work. Medical professionals may also be inclined to diagnose and prescribe, rather than take the chance of harming the patient himself. Diagnosis names and baselines change, meaning data is not always comparable over time.
Meanwhile, interactions remain poorly understood between (a) weather affected by climate change and (b) medications and therapies for mental health. Many connections are shown or suspected, such as heat reducing the effectiveness of special depression medications or extreme rain triggering stress in people who lost their homes to floods. The difference between “shown” and “alleged” is not always acknowledged. Context and confounders are inevitably present.
Develop indicators to track
One of the most prominent and confusing contexts for human-caused climate change is that people’s mental health may be affected by the doomerism surrounding climate change. Discussions continue about how much eco-anxiety and climate grief caused by negative reporting replaces the reality of the impact of human-caused climate change.
For example, like the hurricanes mentioned above, it is not immediately obvious that disasters should increase as climate change progresses. Without action, it will be rough. The balance is how much action can be taken to avoid disasters, regardless of the changing climate. Throughout the world of climate change, much can be achieved for eco-inspiration and climate hope, which will help to dispel fear without encouraging complacency or denying the real difficulties.
Perhaps tracking the mental health impacts of climate change and finding ideal indicators is a distraction. Instead, we already know what action to take: Offer mental health services to everyone and stop human-caused climate change—and they’ll support each other.
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