Mental Health and Inequalities During Climate Change
One of my electives this semester is called ‘Changing Climate, Changing Health’ and is all about making links between climate change and health, and recognising how interlinked human, animal, and environmental health are. My assignment for this class has been focusing on how heat waves impact mental health. Since climate change means we are getting more frequent heat waves in the UK, these impacts are going to become more prominent.
One of the impacts that really shocked me was how certain drugs prescribed to treat mental health conditions may alter the body’s ability to thermoregulate. These include SSRI antidepressants (e.g. sertraline, prozac), Beta Blockers, and Lithium drugs (prescribed for bipolar disorder and depression). This means that people on these medications are less likely to be able to adapt to increasing temperatures, and are thus at an increased risk of death during prolonged heat periods. Furthermore, people with diagnosed mental illness show a 5% increase in the risk of death for every 1 degree C increase in temperature, and suicide rates tend to go up by 3.5% for every additional 1 degree C in temperature.
These impacts were really surprising to me, especially as this impact on drugs is not something that is widely known or talked about. These stats just show how much climate change is a justice issue, as many people who are already considered vulnerable and who are suffering from conditions that are heavily stigmatised and under-funded/often under-researched are likely to face worse impacts from climate change.
Before this class, I was already aware of some of the global inequalities that climate change is likely to bring, such as rising sea levels in SIDS. Previous classes I’ve been in have also pointed out the injustice that those countries/states who have historically emitted the least amount of carbon are also the same ones who are likely to face climate change’s worst effects. The health inequalities within this were also relatively well known to me – decreasing air quality increasing respirtatory conditions, droughts and floods impacting crop yields leading to malnutrition – but it was this class that made me aware of this mental health disparity that climate change will bring.
Some of these mental health impacts are also tied to feelings of eco-anxiety or eco-depression, feelings of hopelessness and an impending sense of doom due to the gravity of the climate situation. And, because of climate change’s inequality, these impacts are also more likely to be felt by those same countries that are experiencing climate change’s worst effects, thus creating even more of a mental health inequality. Not to mention how these impacts are likely to be stratified by gender, race, class etc.
Overall, I think I’m just learning that inequality goes deeper and further than I had imagined before, that there are so many hidden inequalities that I’ve yet to even consider. And especially where inequality overlaps with oppression (and it often does), we don’t hear the perspectives of those who are facing the worst of inequality, their voices are silenced while our perspective is forced onto the impacts on the most powerful. My main takeaway here is that climate change (and health inequality) is inherently political. We have the knowledge to adapt and to mitigate and to fund and to reallocate resources, but the extent to which we do that is decided by the politics of those with the most power. My point is that pursuing an equal society in health, especially during climate change, relies largely on our political power and will and thus it is so important that we hold those in power accountable for the choices they make that impact justice for current and future generations.
