Opinion - (2023) Volume 9, Issue 1
Received: 02-Jan-2023, Manuscript No. IPAP-23-15804; Editor assigned: 04-Jan-2023, Pre QC No. IPAP-23-15804 (PQ); Reviewed: 18-Jan-2023, QC No. IPAP-23-15804; Revised: 23-Jan-2023, Manuscript No. IPAP-23-15804(R); Published: 30-Jan-2023, DOI: 10.4172/2469-6676-9.2.03
Climate change is one of the biggest challenges of our time and is likely to affect human beings in substantial ways. Recently, researchers started paying more attention to the changes in climate and their subsequent impact on the social, environmental and economic determinants of health, and the role they play in causing or exacerbating mental health problems. The effects of climate change-related events on mental well-being could be classified into direct and indirect effects. The direct effects of climate change mostly occur after acute weather events and include Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, anxiety, substance abuse disorder, depression and even suicidal ideation. The indirect effects include economic losses, displacement and forced migration, competition over scarce resources and collective violence. The risk factors for developing those mental health issues include young age, female gender, low socioeconomic status, loss or injury of a loved one, being a member of immigrant groups or indigenous people, pre-existing mental illness and inadequate social support. However, in some individuals, especially those undisturbed by any directly observable effects of climate change, abstract awareness and acknowledgement of the ongoing climate crisis can induce negative emotions that can be intense enough to cause mental health illness. Coping strategies should be provided to the affected communities to protect their mental health from collapse in the face of climate disasters. Awareness of the mental health impacts of climate change should be raised, especially in the high-risk groups. Social and global attention to the climate crisis and its detrimental effects on mental health are crucial.
This paper was written with the aim of trying to understand the currently, scientifically proven impact of climate change-related disasters on mental health and understanding the different methods of solving the problem at the corporate level, by trying to decrease greenhouse gas emissions to zero, and at the individual level by learning how to cope with the impacts of those disasters. Climate change can affect different systems in the human body, including the respiratory, the cardiovascular and the central nervous system. The physical impact of climate change that can affect mental health includes injuries and fatalities with their impact on mental health; respiratory diseases like asthma and allergies due to an increase in allergens and air pollution with potential for depression and anxiety; changes in vector-borne diseases (as increased temperatures can shorten the time between blood meals of mosquitos and accelerate the development of protozoa or viruses within the insect, also it can change patterns of breeding and length of seasons, for example, mosquitos hibernate over winter), which will lead to adverse mental health outcomes caused by vector-borne infections.
However, there is robust evidence for it. Mental health can be affected directly especially after acute climate events in the form of higher rates of anxiety, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), depression, substance abuse and domestic violence after the events. These acute events can also have indirect effects on mental health caused by disrupting educational and medical services, economic losses in the form of property damage, loss of income and employment opportunities, reduced economic productivity especially in agricultural societies, population displacement and forced migration, and increased conflict and violence, all of which significantly impact mental health. One of the major challenges of studying mental health in different contexts is the diversity of cultural and social norms, values and beliefs, which determines how mental health manifests and is perceived.
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The author declares there is no conflict of interest in publishing this article.
Citation: Hassan M (2023) The Major Climate Change and Mental Health Correlated. Act Psycho. 9:03
Copyright: © 2023 Hassan M. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
