Empirical evidence of mental health risks posed by climate change

Abstract

Sound mental health—a critical facet of human wellbeing—has the potential to be undermined by climate change. Few large-scale studies have empirically examined this hypothesis. Here, we show that short-term exposure to more extreme weather, multiyear warming, and tropical cyclone exposure each associate with worsened mental health. To do so, we couple meteorological and climatic data with reported mental health difficulties drawn from nearly 2 million randomly sampled US residents between 2002 and 2012. We find that shifting from monthly temperatures between 25 °C and 30 °C to >30 °C increases the probability of mental health difficulties by 0.5% points, that 1°C of 5-year warming associates with a 2% point increase in the prevalence of mental health issues, and that exposure to Hurricane Katrina associates with a 4% point increase in this metric. Our analyses provide added quantitative support for the conclusion that environmental stressors produced by climate change pose threats to human mental health.

Sensitivity to Climate and Weather Changes in Euthymic Bipolar Subjects: Association With Suicide Attempts

“…Increasing evidence indicates that climate change may affect mental health via multiple mechanisms, both direct and indirect, leading to outcomes ranging from psychological distress, fear, anxiety, or depression, to sleep disorders, substance use, and suicide (67,70,75). In our sample the symptomatic load, both physical and psychological, related to climate and weather variations was associated with lifetime SAs.…”

“…Increased sensitivity to climate and weather variables, especially among fragile populations such as psychiatric patients, represents an issue to be considered in the light of the severe climatic modifications currently taking place. In fact, global climate change is now regarded as one of the biggest crisis facing humanity, and the impact of its consequences on mental health, both in adults and children, has been recognized as a major concern among mental health specialists (66)(67)(68)(69)(70)(71)(72). Accordingly, in 2017 the American Psychiatry Association (APA) released a position statement that climate change "poses a threat to public health, including mental health", with people suffering from psychiatric disorders expected to be more dramatically impacted (73).…”

Cultural Changes in Neural Structure and Function

“…Other research has linked levels of income inequality to changes in levels of social capital (Twenge, Campbell, and Carter, 2014). Finally, a series of studies by Obradovich suggests that changes in climate (increasing maximum temperatures and average precipitation) are linked to a variety of cultural phenomena ranging from electoral turnover (Obradovich, 2017) to rising levels of mental health difficulties (Obradovich et al, 2018) and that continuing climate change is likely to accelerate these social shifts in the decades to come. Taken together, these lines of research suggest that changes in basic dimensions of our physical and social ecologies may be key to understanding and predicting patterns of cultural change.…”

“…As noted earlier in this chapter, levels of well-being appear to have declined substantially in the US over the past century, with evidence of increases in the prevalence of anxiety and depressive symptoms. Recent work suggests that declines in the amount of time people spend engaged in deep real world social interactions (vs. online) and increases in the unpleasantness of weather (more heat, more rain) have led and will continue to lead to greater prevalence of mental health problems (Obradovich et al, 2018;. What changes might we see in the brain as a result?…”

Risk of a feedback loop between climatic warming and human mobility

“…And these climatic changes, in turn, are shaping the human system [3]. From psychological health [4] and expectations [5] to physiological well-being [6,7], from exercise [8] to mood [9], from daily productivity [10] to economywide growth [11] and from public safety [12,13] to civil discord [14,15], warming stands to substantially alter human outcomes. Though potential feedback loops exist [16][17][18][19], scholars predominantly investigate these two topics-human contributions to climate change and the social impacts of a changing climate-in isolation [20].…”