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NewSecurityBeat

The blog of the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program
  • As Droughts, Floods, Die-Offs Proliferate, “Climate Trauma” a Growing Phenomenon

    September 9, 2015 By Carley Chavara
    Jowhar flood in Somalia

    According to recent polling, climate change is seen as the single most threatening international challenge around the world, and there’s evidence that all that worry is taking a psychological toll. Adding to droughts, floods, extreme weather, and die-offs, psychologists are observing higher levels of anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder in certain areas and professions. Even people who do not actively stress about global warming or view it as a major threat may still suffer psychological trauma from its effects.

    Studying Doomsday

    One group most directly affected by this phenomenon is climate scientists and advocates. For scientists, repeatedly observing life-altering climactic changes and predicting doomsday scenarios can contribute to a type of anxiety and depression that some are referring to as “climate trauma.”

    An existential threat on one hand, apathy or outright hostility on the other

    “I don’t know of a single scientist that’s not having an emotional reaction to what is being lost,” said award-winning biologist Camille Parmesan in a National Wildlife Federation report. “Some of these people have been studying a particular reef or a particular bird or a particular mammal for 40 to 50 years and to start seeing it die off is a very hard thing.”

    Climate scientists can experience fear and hopelessness when faced with such an existential threat on one hand and apathy or outright hostility from the public and policymakers on the other.

    Some receive death threats on a regular basis, as in the case of Michael E. Mann, creator of the “hockey stick” graph. “On one occasion, I had to call the FBI after I was sent an envelope with a powder in it,” Mann told The Guardian. “It turned out to be cornmeal but again the aim was intimidation… That is the life of a climate scientist today in the U.S.”

    Parmesan left the United States in part to avoid having to spend lectures convincing the audience that climate change was real in the first place, according to Grist. Compared to other threats, the U.S. public is the least concerned about climate change of any major region in the world.

    Yet climate change can still have psychological impact on those not directly involved with the environmental field. In 2007, the first case of “climate delusion” was diagnosed when a 17-year-old Australian was hospitalized after refusing to drink water for fear of contributing to the country’s drought.

    A Lasting Impact

    Climate-related disasters can have a direct mental health impact when loss of life and property occurs. Research has connected extreme weather events such as floods, heat waves, and cyclones to reactions of extreme anxiety.

    Participants in a 2009 study published in Health & Place used the words “horrifying,” “panic stricken,” and “petrified” to describe their initial reactions during the 2005 flooding of the city of Carlisle in the United Kingdom. Some experienced panic attacks, insomnia, low motivation, and obsessive behavior well after the disaster. This experience is typical among disaster survivors; while the disaster itself may be acute, anxieties can have long-term effects, developing into chronic depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, aggressive behaviors, and even suicide.

    Long-term climate changes can also prompt psychological symptoms, including increased likelihood of developing chronic anxiety disorders, depression, and substance abuse. Sustained droughts increase the risk of suicide among male farmers, according to one study in New South Wales, Australia.

    As physical and mental health share a causal, reciprocal relationship, climate change can also inflict indirect harm on mental health through damaging one’s physical well-being. Mental health can be compromised in the case of impaired fetal development, physical injury or trauma, asthma or allergy risk, heat-related illness, or increased exposure to pests, disease, and toxins.

    Changes in the physical environment triggered by climate change can have psychological effects, such as proliferating vector-borne disease, respiratory illness from poor air quality, and changes in food and water quality and availability. To some communities, particularly those with cultural, religious, or identity-based roots in the natural world, dramatic damage to the Earth’s landscape alone can cause significant distress.

    In all, the National Wildlife Federation estimates 200 million people in the United States alone will be exposed to serious psychological trauma from climate-related disasters in the coming years.

    Vulnerable Communities

    Psychological symptoms are especially likely amongst people exposed to climate disasters more than once. Those regions most vulnerable to climate change are also those with the least amount of human resources and access to mental health care. Worse, these areas are also the poorest.

    According to a report by the American Psychological Association, the most vulnerable communities are the most impoverished and particularly women, children, and the elderly. A study in Australia found that following the 1974 Brisbane floods a significant number of new psychiatric symptoms occurred, with the greatest suffering among women and those between 35 and 75 years of age.

    There is less than 1 mental health worker for every 100,000 people in low-income countries

    Another study in the United States found that recently arrived immigrants, migrants, or refugees are particularly vulnerable to the psychological impacts of climate change as these groups are most vulnerable to disruptions in services that disasters can affect, like shelter, nutrition, and safe drinking water.

    Communities are even more susceptible to trauma following a disaster if few income-earning opportunities are available. Those no longer able to be employed by climate-dependent sectors, such as farming and fishing, may experience significant occupational identity loss. Being forced to move has significant psychological impacts as well.

    Adaptation strategies, either forced or voluntary, can create distress themselves. In one study, residents moved to make way for China’s Three Gorges Dam underwent significant levels of distress compared with other people in the region. These challenges are compounded by an extreme shortage of mental health resources. Not only did results from the Three Gorges study show elevated levels of depression, but migrants had poorer access to social and psychological resources than their counterparts to deal with these changes.

    While nearly 1 in 10 people suffer from a mental health disorder, there is less than 1 mental health worker for every 100,000 people in low-income countries, according to the World Health Organization. While comparisons between 2005 and 2011 show a slight gain in human resources, this occurred in mainly mid- and high-income countries while lower- and lower mid-income countries experienced a decline. The availability of beds in mental health hospitals decreased worldwide on average.

    A Balancing Act

    Although psychologists urge caution about creating pathologies out of normal reactions to disasters, they hold that there is a compelling case for further assessing the impact of climate change on mental health.

    How do you prompt action without using vivid imagery?

    The American Psychological Association provides a list of tips to engage the public on climate change without causing undue distress. These include communicating specific solutions, acknowledging emotions toward climate change, focusing on local conditions and customs, and exercising caution when using vivid imagery.

    This raises a question for advocates, however: How do you prompt action and concern about climate change without using vivid imagery?

    If climate change messaging becomes so extreme that it instills hopelessness and implies that the situation is irreversible, some may see no reason to make short-term sacrifices to address it, writes Andrew Fiala of California State University, Fresno. At the same time, downplaying the seriousness of the situation may fail to spark engagement.

    “Voluntary participation in collective action that requires individuals to sacrifice short-term self-interest is only rational when there is a perceived balance between the sense of crisis and the hope for a solution,” Fiala says.

    Reaching such a balance seems to not only be a political, social, and environmental imperative, but a matter of individual mental health too.

    Sources: American Psychological Association, Annual Review of Psychology, The Atlantic, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, Bloomberg News, Epidemiologic Reviews, Ethics & the Environment, Global Environmental Change, Grist, The Guardian, Health & Place, International Journal of Mental Health Systems, International Journal of Public Health, Maplecroft,  National Wildlife Federation, Pew Global Research, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Psychology and Aging, Social Science & Medicine, World Health Organization.

    Photo Credit: Displaced people near Jowhar, Somalia, November 2013, courtesy of Tobin Jones/UN Photo.

    Topics: adaptation, aging, Australia, climate change, conservation, demography, development, economics, environment, environmental health, extreme weather, featured, flooding, funding, gender, global health, livelihoods, migration, natural resources, poverty, risk and resilience, U.S., UK, youth
    • Greeley Miklashek

      Ironically, this article is a link to the wonderful piece from Lund University in Sweden pointing out the CO2 savings of reducing human reproduction by just one child, but this article says NOTHING about the main driver of all negative environmental effects: human overpopulation. Hmmmm.

      • greenfoot

        Did you mean fossil fuels?

    • notsofastnow

      You can’t help but be cynical.

      Exxon new about climate change in 1981, yet has funded disinformation campaigns for over 30 years, all for profit.

      In the 1960s, we already knew of the the dangers of an exploding population, yet that did nothing to put the brakes on population growth.

      We knew about the dangers of widespread pollution and a ravaged environment. Meanwhile, we’ve drawn billions of new customers into our wet dream of mindless consumption.

      Ed Ayres wrote about this in God’s Last Offer, published nearly 20 years ago. He discusses the four hockey stick graphs of CO2 rise, human population growth, species extinction, and resource depletion. He also posited that the reason we are blind to the impending disaster is that it will be so huge it will fall outside any current frame of reference. We can’t see it because it it will be unprecedented.

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