As temperatures continue to rise around the world, so are the profound impacts on our health, including our mental health, according to a major report from nearly 100 experts, including the World Health Organization, recently published by the Lancet Countdown. This seventh annual report is based on previous reportsechoing a dire warning about the health consequences of global warming.
While some impacts from record temperatures, such as increased illness due to exposure to heat waves and extremely high temperatures, may be expected, other impacts, such as increased risk of mental health problems and increased spread of infections, are less obvious effects that can have global impacts, according to the report.
According to the report, severe temperature rises and heat waves have been associated with decreased mental health and increased suicidality.
“Climate change affects people’s mental health through a variety of different pathways,” Dr. Marina Romanello, executive director of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change report, told ABC News.
“Some are more obvious and easily attributable, such as the profound mental health impacts of disasters related to extreme weather events,” Romanello said. “However, mental health impacts of climate change may also stem from, for example, exposure to extreme heat, which has been associated in the literature with increased interpersonal violence, crime and self-harm.”
This handout photo taken on May 29, 2017 and made available by Graham Colby on October 17, 2022 shows researchers drilling holes to collect sediment in Lake Hazen in Nunavut, to investigate how climate change could increase the risk of “viral spillover”. Climate warming could bring Arctic viruses into contact with new environments and hosts, increasing the risk of “viral spillover,” according to research published on October 19, 2022.
Graham Colby/Graham COLBY/AFP via Getty Image
With climate change, young people in particular have been more susceptible to depression, anxiety, substance use and sleep problems, according to the report.
“Eighty-four percent of young people are moderately to extremely anxious about climate change,” Dr. Elizabeth Haase, chair of the American Psychiatric Association’s Committee on Climate Change and Mental Health, told ABC News. “Along with the ongoing stress that follows extreme weather comes more drug and alcohol abuse, more child abuse and domestic violence, more poverty, poorer diets, more homelessness, fractured families and communities.”
In addition to these profound impacts on mental health, the report details how rising temperatures are putting our physical health at risk.
Heat-related deaths in people 65 and older increased nearly 70% between 2000-2004 and 2017-2021. Exposure to extremely high temperatures is associated with heat stroke, kidney damage, and worsening of existing heart and lung disease. With rising temperatures, the spread and survival of some infectious diseases also increases, resulting in an overall higher risk of infectious disease outbreaks.
“The accelerating impact of climate change on health has become increasingly apparent. It’s having devastating effects on health,” Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, told ABC News. “The new Lancet report further documents the devastation that climate change is wreaking on the world’s population.”
With all these possible health impacts, is our health system, which has already been affected recently by the COVID-19 pandemic, ready to deal with these possible consequences? Not quite. “The health sector response to date has been inadequate and must be scaled up dramatically because global health is in immediate danger,” Benjamin said.
Karina Joseph, 19, comforts her 2-year-old daughter, Holland Sineus, as she receives cholera treatment in a tent at a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Cite Soleil, a densely populated commune in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, October 10, 2019. 15, 2022.
Ricardo Arduengo/Reuters
Society may be even less prepared to deal with the mental health impacts of climate change, scientists warn. Just this past December, US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued an advisory about the youth mental health crisis.
With recent large increases in youth requiring mental health services, our already understaffed mental health care system has been further reduced and unable to meet this need. And climate change is expected to further increase the need for these services.
According to the Lancet report, only a minority of countries have considered climate change impacts on mental health in their action plans and only one in four countries report having a program that incorporates mental health into their disaster preparedness programs .
“This clearly shows that we are not preparing to deal with and downplay the expected increase in mental health impacts of climate change,” Romanello said.
Anna Yegiants, MD, MPH is a resident physician in psychiatry and a member of the ABC News Medical Unit.
