Flood, drought, heat wave, tornado, hurricane: extreme weather events kill. They also poison the mental health of thousands of us.
Posted at 2:00 p.m.
Indeed, how can we rejoice when we see the damage to our home after a flood? How to be overwhelmed with happiness when your house is engulfed in flames due to wildfires like it happened in Lytton, British Columbia, last summer1 ? How to rejoice in a heat wave that drags on and whose mercury remains above 30°C even at night?
These events will become “normal” and more frequent. Despite relatively recent literature on this subject, climate change risks significantly affecting the physical and mental health of individuals in addition to accelerating the development of various pathologies. The effects of climate change can be direct, indirect, short-term or long-term. These events act as mechanisms similar to those of traumatic stress.2 leading to already well-known psychopathological patterns. Climate change thus increases the likelihood of experiencing traumatic stress.
In addition, the impacts of exposure to extreme weather events can emerge late, which promotes post-traumatic stress disorders and potentially transmitted to younger generations.
In other words, climate change is a real time bomb for the mental health of humanity, especially at a time when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that between 3.3 and 3.6 billion people3 live in areas that are highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change.
Silent Crisis
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), anxiety and depressive disorders increased by nearly 25% in the first year of the pandemic alone. However, mental health services have been greatly disrupted and the deficit in the treatment of mental disorders has worsened. The climate crisis is slowly coming on and is unlikely to cause a shock similar to that of the COVID-19 pandemic, but mental health issues will emerge quietly and for a very long time. It can be called a silent crisis. Again, we have to be realistic: the number of people who will need help will explode. Worse still, the number of people crying out for help will surpass all expectations.
In addition, health services in Quebec, as elsewhere, are not adequately prepared to deal with this mental health crisis. In Canada and Quebec, for example, nearly one person in five4 suffers from mental disorders, according to recent data from the National Institute of Public Health of Quebec (INSPQ). However, mental health services elsewhere in the world are far from being equivalent to those offered here in Quebec and Canada. It must be said, it is a privilege to receive mental health care even though it is relatively difficult to access. Moreover, this difficulty of access is likely to exacerbate the crisis that awaits us.
Finally, the relationship between climatic events and mental disorders is broken down by the introduction of new terms, including eco-anxiety, eco-guilt, ecological grief and solastalgia.5. They are even already experienced by many young adults. The Mouvement Santé Mentale Québec believes that the majority of young adults6 of the province are already affected by eco-anxiety and its derivatives characterized by a feeling of distress in the face of environmental issues related to the disruption of ecosystems. There is no doubt that this is a problem in addition to the many other problems in terms of public health, more insidious than ever.
The planet is sick; his people too. We can help or let die…
1. Zeidler, Maryse (2021, July 5). “The fire that destroyed the village of Lytton is believed to be of human origin”, HERE Radio Canada
2. Cianconi Paolo, Betrò, Sophia and Janiri, Luigi (2020). “The Impact of Climate Change on Mental Health: A Systematic Descriptive Review”, Forehead. psychiatry 11:74, DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2020.00074
5. Cianconi Paolo, Betrò, Sophia and Janiri, Luigi (2020). “The Impact of Climate Change on Mental Health: A Systematic Descriptive Review”, Forehead. psychiatry 11:74. Doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2020.00074