Crisis in B.C. will contribute to climate mental health woes: expert
CTV
The crisis in B.C. will contribute to the ongoing mental health issues surrounding the anxiety and depression some people have in response to climate change and the extreme weather events tied to it, an expert says.
“It’s a really difficult situation out in B.C. right now, the people out in B.C. have had to face…fire, there’s been drought, there’s been heat domes and now flooding – that is difficult,” Moloo said on CTV News Channel on Saturday.
The terms eco-anxiety, environmental grief and solastalgia – meaning a feeling of homesickness when home changes around you – have become more mainstream as climate change has moved front and centre in global headlines, but the concept of mental health being tied to climate change is not new.
In 2013, Memorial University professor Ashlee Cunsolo released a paper on the Inuit in the Labrador community of Rigolet, where people spoke of the sorrow they felt about being cut off from places they’d visited for generations because of vanishing sea ice.
A 2019 report prepared by the Conservation Council of New Brunswick was published on climate change affecting the mental health of the people in the province after flooding and ice storms.
