The assessment of climate change on mental health

The world has only twelve years to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius and avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change, according to the latest report from Britain's leading climate panel . Without swift and radical action, climate change will expose hundreds of millions more people to heat waves, sea-level rise, extreme weather events – and, according to a new study published earlier this year. month in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, deterioration of mental health outcomes.

Previous studies have shown that rising temperatures can disrupt sleep patterns, worsen moods and increase the risk of suicide, which has led author Nick Obradovich and colleagues to question whether temperatures extremes could also lead to mental health problems such as stress, depression, etc. or anxiety. To find out, the researchers examined the self-reported mental health data collected by the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention between 2002 and 2012. The team compared health data to same-period weather data to discover how extreme temperatures, progressive warming and extreme weather events were followed by self-reports of residents' mental health.

"In general, we found that exposure to warmer temperatures and [more] Obradovich, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, found that precipitation increased the number of reported mental health problems. Months with at least 25 days of precipitation increased the likelihood of mental health problems by 2%, while average monthly temperatures above 30 degrees Celsius (or 86 degrees Fahrenheit) resulted in a 0.5% increase in likelihood of mental health problems. A half percent may seem insignificant, but at the population level, displacement would result in about two million In the United States, more and more people report mental health problems, already widespread and costly for society US.

The data also suggests that the risk may be slightly high for low-income populations compared to those with higher incomes, and for women compared to men. These differences, albeit minimal, correspond to previous studies showing that low-income people and women are often disproportionately affected by climate change, according to Obradovich. "These results are not very surprising, but they are still worrying," he said.

In the long term, each 1 degree increase in average temperature increases the risk of mental health problems by 2%, while natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina resulted in a 4% increase in risk.

"If you look at the whole literature, you will see that higher temperatures and exposure to extreme temperatures are associated with deteriorating results in all areas of human well-being," Obradovich said. "We know that the increase in temperature worsens sleep, worsening mood, cognitive performance, and productivity." The big question now is why.

Obradovich and his colleagues are addressing this issue. This is a crucial question for policy makers, he says, because the interventions will be very different if all the negative effects of the increase in temperature result from disturbances of sleep, for example, or day. Temperatures also influence mental health, mood, and cognition by other means.

He quickly notes that this study is "just a data point" in the increasingly documented literature showing that climate change is costly to human health and has its limits. This study looked at environmental stressors such as heat, precipitation and natural disasters, but Obradovich says that the existential threat of climate change could also have an effect on mental health that was not taken into account in this study. "For example, if people are really concerned about climate change because they live near the coast and that means that they may have to move over the next few decades, we do not want to move. let's not talk about it at all in this study, "which means the study may underestimate the risk of climate change for mental health.

There is also uncertainty for the future. We could be more resilient to climate change in decades. "Imagine a world where everyone in the United States has access to incredible, scientifically based mental health care," Obradovich said. "In this world, the effect between warm temperatures and the consequences on mental health could be reduced."

We could also act to prevent further warming. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's US report, avoiding an additional warming of 0.5 to 2 degrees is not about inventing new technologies, but about intensifying the ones we already have. We have the means to prevent a more catastrophic climate change; the question is whether we have the will.

This story originally appeared as Climate change is bad for mental health sure Pacific Standard, an editorial partner site. Subscribe to the magazine newsletter and follow Pacific Standard sure Twitter support journalism in the public interest.