UN report delves into how climate change is affecting mental health
CBC
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While the effects of climate disasters are piling up on people and communities, the damage goes well beyond physical destruction.
This week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a sprawling report on the impacts, vulnerabilities and adaptation options of a warming planet. One of the things the report zoomed in on was research done over the past few years on how our mental health is suffering from climate change — whether we are witnessing it directly or not.
"Watching people experience the floods in British Columbia, watching people be evacuated from wildfire areas, all of those things take a toll on our mental health," said Sherilee Harper, lead author on the report's chapter on North America.
"Seeing those images, seeing suffering, seeing infrastructure damage impacts our anxiety as well."
Harper is a professor at the University of Alberta and specializes in the link between climate change and health. She said growing research suggests the climate crisis is impacting mental health in three ways: it affects people directly when they experience floods, heat waves and other disasters; it affects people when their livelihoods are threatened; and it affects people who watch this misery unfolding on the news.
"The report shows for the first time, in an in-depth manner, how climate change is already impacting health in these different ways, but also how it's going to continue to do so into the future," Harper said.
These mental health challenges will not be felt equally. The IPCC points out that certain groups are more vulnerable — for instance, farming communities, whose livelihoods are directly threatened by extreme weather. Indigenous communities will also face greater challenges from the disruption to ecosystems they rely on for their food, culture and social ties.
Young people are especially vulnerable, as they face an increasingly uncertain future. In its summary for policymakers, the IPCC report said "mental health challenges, including anxiety and stress, are expected to increase under further global warming in all assessed regions, particularly for children, adolescents, elderly and those with underlying health conditions."
Robert McLeman, an environmental studies professor at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont., and a lead author on the report's chapter on health and well-being, said health care systems need to start preparing for these challenges.
"There's growing evidence that younger people feel [climate change] as a source of anxiety, as a source of stress, as they look to the future and they start to worry about their own place within it," McLeman said.
What's the solution to all this? The obvious answer is to cut greenhouse gas emissions and limit global warming. But even if the world can limit warming to 1.5 C — it's at about 1.2 C today — mental health challenges will likely grow and countries will have to adapt.
The IPCC suggests "improving surveillance, access to mental health care and monitoring of psychosocial impacts from extreme weather events." Research has also highlighted the various co-benefits of other adaptation plans on mental health. Implementing measures to hold back floods, for example, would improve the mental health of farmers.
