Every year for six years, Laureen Wamaitha hoped that her fields in Kenya would thrive. Every year, I watched the drought wither the crops and then the floods swept them away. The cycle of optimism and loss left her constantly worried and blamed climate change. “You get to a stage where you have panic attacks because you’re worried about something,” he says.
Meanwhile, medical student Vashti-Eve Burrows watched as the harsh Hurricane Dorian swept through the Bahamas in 2019 and now fears for the future of the country, an island archipelago vulnerable to storms and emerging sea degrees. “Will there even be a Bahamas in 20 to 20 years?” “30 years maybe?” he says.
Wamaitha and Burrows are part of a developing organization of people speaking out about the effects of climate change on mental health. Climate change is exacerbating intellectual disorders, which already affect around one billion people and are among the leading causes of poor health worldwide. A 2021 global survey found that more than a portion of seniors aged 16 to 25 felt sad, worried, or helpless, or enjoyed other negative feelings about climate change1. In total, many millions of people may simply experience some sort of negative feeling. Intellectual reaction to the climate crisis.
Scientists say the topic has been seriously neglected, but it still ranks high on the study agenda. “I’ve noticed an explosion of studies in the last five years. It’s very exciting,” says Alison Hwong, a psychiatrist and intellectual fitness specialist at the University. California, San Francisco. La increasing severity of heat, hurricanes and other effects means it’s “impossible to ignore,” he says.
The researchers want to explore the many ways climate change affects intellectual health, from trauma caused by hurricanes, floods, droughts, and fires to “eco-anxiety,” a chronic preoccupation with environmental and intellectual disaster. Studies on strategies that can help others save it or help you also need to manage these disorders, some charts suggest that climate action and activism can only help.
A certain climate injustice is revealed through research. Young people are more likely to enjoy the greater intellectual burden of climate change that older generations have caused. Groups of people who are already experiencing poverty, disease, or inequality are at higher risk of deterioration. intellectual health. ” Climate change is exacerbating existing economic situations, where it is the poorest who feel even worse,” says Jennifer Uchendu, researcher, climate activist and founder of SustyVibes, an environmental-intellectual organization founded in Lagos, Nigeria.
The fact that climate change is affecting people’s intellectual fitness is not surprising: what is new is the attention this factor is receiving and the myriad tactics that scientists are documenting about its diverse and impactful effects.
It’s well known that extreme weather and mistakes can have an immediate traumatic impact, as well as “a wide range of intellectual fitness issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, and substance abuse,” says Emma Lawrance, who studies intellectuality. Less sudden, but devastating, shocks caused by the effects of global warming, such as forced migration, loss of livelihoods, food insecurity and the collapse of networks, also have negative consequences for intellectual fitness in vulnerable countries.
There is evidence that experiencing higher temperatures can directly worsen intellectual health. A 2018 study on suicide awareness in the U. S. A survey of suicide rates in the U. S. and Mexico over two or more decades showed that suicide rates rose to 0. 7% in the U. S. The average monthly temperature rises by 1°C. 2 Researchers expect between 9,000 and 40,000 new suicides to occur by 2050 in both countries if no action is taken on climate change. Other studies have shown that higher temperatures are linked to poor sleep, which in turn can contribute to intellectual distress3.
Studies also recommend that other people with intellectual illnesses are at increased risk of dying in excessively hot conditions,4 but “understanding why this happens and what we can do to prevent it is really unexplored,” Lawrance says. One plausible explanation is that some psychiatric medications can interfere with the body’s reaction to heat. 5
Another historical area of study examines how awareness about climate change and its effects can generate concern or distress, a phenomenon called eco-anxiety, eco-distress, climate pain, or solastalgia (environmental change-like distress). In the survey, 72% of other seniors aged 18 to 34 said that negative environmental news affected their emotional well-being, for example, by causing anxiety, racing thoughts, or sleep disturbances (see go. nature. com/3vbbt7p). A 20206 survey in the U. K. found that young people between the ages of 16 and 24 reported being more pressured by climate updates than COVID-19.
A few years ago, those “ecological emotions” were rarely perceived as a fear for “worries” in high-income countries, Lawrance says. But studies showing the global success of those emotions demand this view. It was the largest ever conducted on climate anxiety and included 10,000 children and youth in 10 countries. More than 45% of respondents said fears about climate change had a negative effect on their diet, work, sleep or other aspects. of their daily lives. Reports of climate changes affecting other people’s ability to serve were highest in the Philippines, India, and Nigeria and lowest in the U. S. and U. K. , contradicting the concept that eco-anxiety is only a challenge in wealthy countries. (see “Climate Anxiety in the World”). ‘).
For some, eco-anxiety can be akin to experiencing climate-like devastation firsthand. The fact that young Filipinos report some of the degrees of worry was not a surprise to John Jamir Benzon Aruta, an environmental psychologist at De La Salle. In 2013, he witnessed the devastation and trauma caused in the Philippines by Typhoon Haiyan, one of the harshest tropical cyclones ever recorded. “You see devastated houses, communities. You also see dead bodies everywhere,” he said. Just witnessing the aftermath traumatized me. “
But the 2021 survey highlighted widespread misery that went beyond those who were immediately affected by extreme weather events. About 75% of respondents said the climate update made them think the future was scary and 56% said it made them think humanity was doomed to fail. They felt that if their government didn’t take action on climate issues, they would most likely revel in ecological misery.
Climate change isn’t the first existential crisis humanity has faced, but researchers note that it’s distinct from other threats: It’s happening now that poses a long-term risk, such as nuclear war; it affects the overall overall at once; And many other people feel angry because they have to bear the brunt of climate change caused by other people.
Feelings of eco-anxiety are not necessarily a sign of dysfunction. “If you’re under immediate threat, reacting with anxiety or worry is a realistic, rational and healthy survival instinct,” says Elizabeth Marks, a clinical psychologist at the University of Bath. in the United Kingdom and one of the lead authors of the survey. Authors. A disorder could even be detrimental to those emotions. “If we think of it as a diagnosable disease, there’s a risk that the individual will be blamed because of a bad reaction,” he says. That said, some other people might be so weakened by their ecological misery that they would benefit from mental help.
Social media is used to monitor negative feelings similar to climate change. In 2023, studies of more More than 8 billion posts on Twitter (now known as X) emerged between 2015 and 2022 from other people who chose to share their geolocation knowledge. (The study was part of a larger report on fitness and climate change. 7) The researchers analyzed the tweets for positive words (such as good, good, new and love) and negative words (bad, false, hate and damage), and established a link between them. to obtain weather information from the tweeter locations. Not surprisingly, the team found that heat waves and excessive precipitation increase negative emotions and decrease positive emotions compared to days without excessive weather at the same location and time of year. They also found that these negative reactions worsened over the years (see “Ecoanxiety on social media”).
The full effects of the climate update on intellectual fitness are difficult to measure. A combination of factors, coupled with the stigma surrounding intellectual fitness and lack of access to fitnessArray, means that many other people with intellectual fitness disorders go undiagnosed. When Wamaitha would reach out to her circle of relatives in Kenya they would worry about her worry and say, “Okay, it’s part of life,” she says. Anxiety and depression are loosely identified as disorders in his area, he says. Mental fitness is low and older people “just think they’re very sensitive because they’ve survived droughts in the past. In the 2021 survey, about 40% of young people around the world said their concerns about the climate update had been ignored or dismissed.
Researchers are particularly concerned that the countries and regions that are experiencing the most severe effects of climate change are those where the fewest studies have been conducted on climate intellectual fitness. In his studies, Uchendu found that most studies focused on the West. ” There weren’t a lot of people talking about those problems in Africa,” he says. In 2022, she presented the work Eco-anxiety in Africa which, in collaboration with the University of Nottingham, UK, documented the emotional turmoil that the warmth and erratic weather has created for other people living in five African cities.
Another question researchers are asking is how context and culture overcome anxiety. Some studies have shown that “connection to the country” – through cultural practices such as hunting and foraging – is vital to the intellectual fitness and well-being of some Aboriginal Australians and Torres. Communities in the Strait Islands,8 says Michelle Dickson, who studies intellectual aptitude. Indigenous Australians at the University of Sydney, Australia. But emerging sea levels, drought and wildfires threaten those practices. Equipment used in physical care settings “rarely takes into account the vital cultural values that underpin Indigenous intellectual aptitude,” says Dickson, an Australian Aboriginal Darkinjung/Ngarigo.
Dickson is currently co-leading a project to empower communities to design their own climate action plans, which will allow researchers to test whether this will affect only people’s intellectual health.
Addressing climate-related intellectual fitness issues will be a daunting task at a time when global attention to intellectual fitness is already lacking: only about 3% of people with depression are treated well enough in low- and middle-income countries, and 23% in high-income countries-income countries9. Lawrance says many communities are looking for their own tactics to cope, but the effectiveness of those efforts is rarely studied or shared. “There’s a huge gap when it comes to valuation,” he says.
There is evidence to suggest that taking action to combat climate change can help other people manage eco-anxiety. “It turns out there’s an argument for encouraging other people to take collective action,” Marks says, for example by joining other like-minded people’s campaign groups. It’s also vital to “acknowledge that I feel this way because I care,” she says. “These climate sentiments should be revered and allowed, not dismissed. Marks also recommends that other people who are experiencing eco-friendly experiences misery restrict the amount of time they spend browsing weather news.
Researchers themselves are beginning to take collective action. Last month, the Connecting Climate Minds project, one of the most ambitious research efforts in the field of climate-related mental health10, published a series of regional “studies and actions” priorities, including, for example, understanding how climate change is making the situation worse. Tension of wars, violence and epidemics in sub-Saharan Africa. The task includes researchers, policymakers, and others with direct experience of climate change. Uchendu says that in one of the meetings, a user who was participating remotely was in his room under the floodwaters. “It was mind-blowing,” he says.
Wamaitha, who, along with Burrows, is one of many others who have shared their reports with Connecting Climate Minds, has turned some of their considerations into action. Last year, after trying unsuccessfully to grow drought-tolerant crops, he gave up farming. and now works at a non-governmental organization in Bura, Kenya, that focuses on poverty alleviation. Earn enough to take a public fitness master’s degree and raise awareness of global fitness on the social networking site LinkedIn. But she’s worried about the long-term and wonders if she’ll have children or not. “I don’t think I’m in a suitable environment to be able to bring kids to this specific place,” he says. “It’s the saddest thing when I think about it. “
Burrows, who is studying medicine at the University of the West Indies in St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago, says she chooses to be positive and does small things to protect the environment, such as walking instead of driving. He says he prays that wealthy countries and corporations “really sense what’s going on and don’t just say sweet words to appease us in the moment. “They act to “help small countries and the world as a whole,” he said.
Nature 628, 256-258 (2024)
It’s me: https://doi. org/10. 1038/d41586-024-00998-6
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