Climate change and mental illness: What psychiatrists can do
What you need to know about climate-related psychiatric concerns and how you can help.
As physicians, we are tasked by society to create and maintain a health care system that addresses the needs of our patients and the communities in which they live. Increasingly, we are forced to contend with an addition to the traditional 5 phases of acute disaster management (prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery) to manage prolonged or even parallel disasters, where a series of disasters occurs before the community has recovered and healed. We must grapple with a sense of an “extended period of insecurity and instability” (permacrisis) and must better prepare for and prevent the polycrisis (many simultaneous crises) or the metacrisis of our “age of turmoil”57 in which we must limit global warming, mitigate its damage, and increase community resilience to adapt.
Leading by personal example and providing hope may be what some patients need, as the reality of climate change contributes to the general uneasiness about the future and doomsday scenarios to which many fall victim. At the level of professional societies, many are calling for leadership, including from mental health organizations, to bolster the “social climate,” to help us strengthen our emotional resilience and social bonds to better withstand climate change together.58 It is becoming harder to justify standing on the sidelines,59 and it may be better for both our world and a clinician’s own sanity to be engaged in professional and private hopeful action1 to address climate change. Without ecological or planetary health, there can be no mental health.
Bottom Line
Clinicians can prepare their patients for climate-related disruptions and manage the impact climate change has on their mental health. Addressing climate change at clinical and political levels is consistent with the leadership roles and professional ethics clinicians face in daily practice.
Related Resources
- Lim C, MacLaurin S, Freudenreich O. Preparing patients with serious mental illness for extreme HEAT. Current Psychiatry. 2022;21(9):27-28. doi:10.12788/cp.0287
- My Green Doctor. https://mygreendoctor.org/
- The Climate Resilience for Frontline Clinics Toolkit from Americares. https://www.americares.org/what-we-do/community-health/climate-resilient-health-clinics
- Climate Psychiatry Alliance. https://www.climatepsychiatry.org/
Drug Brand Names
Clozapine • Clozaril
