Water insecurity is stressing mental health

Hundreds of millions of people around the world lack reliable access to safe drinking water, a growing crisis with a potentially profound impact on their mental health.

Why it matters: Similar to food insecuritywater insecurity has been linked to depression, anxiety and rising rates of violence – and is considered one of the greatest threats facing human beingsvarious scientists tell Axios.

• Water insecurity can be caused by numerous factors, including geology, poor infrastructure, high demand from a population or industry, racism, extreme drought, or intense flooding caused by climate change.
• “A lot of data on water insecurity around the world measures household water connections or the percentage of households that have running water,” says Natalie Exum, who studies the health impacts of water insecurity at the University of Johns Hopkins.
• “We’re not capturing a lot of the stress and burden” that comes with it, she says.
• One challenge is to focus on who is experiencing water insecurity and how it affects their mental health.

What’s new: The Northwestern University researchers sought to better understand who is insecure in water by going beyond “measuring water in terms of what we can touch… to measuring individual experiences,” he says. to study co-authored by Sera Young, associate professor of anthropology and global health.

• His team surveyed 45,555 adults in 31 low- and middle-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, Asia, and Latin America, between September 4, 2020, and February 24, 2021.
• Respondents were asked 12 questions about their experience, including how often they worried about not having enough water or changed their diet due to drought or floods, and how access affects their emotional health.
• The team found that 14% of respondents were water insecure, ranging from 4% in China to 64% in Cameroon. This means that approximately 436 million adults, out of the 3 billion represented in those regions, were water insecure during that time period.

Yes, but: The number of countries examined in that study is small, and the questions did not capture some key dimensions such as water quality, says Amber Wutich, President Professor of Anthropology at Arizona State University.

• But, he says, it’s a “very good first step” toward the much-needed effort of quantifying the global scope of water insecurity at the individual level.

The panorama: Water insecurity occurs all over the world, even in high-income countries or nations with high rainfall totals, Young says.

• This includes the US, where climate changea aging pipeline system Y systemic racism Play an important role.
• Certain municipalities intentionally excluded low-income areas from participating in centralized water infrastructure, primarily impacting Black, Native American and Hispanic populations, Wutich says. “We are living with the legacies of those decisions, and some of those decisions are still happening today.”
• coloniessmall communities built with substandard housing just north of the US-Mexico border, “have never had safe access to water,” says Wutich.
• in jacksonMississippi citizens “have been relegated to a life of orders to boil water, walk long distances with pitchers or collect rainwater in buckets for daily use,” Axios managing editor Delano Massey said. wrote for editor and publisher.

The impact: Mental Health Outcomes of water insecurity are still being studied, but many scientists believe that “experiences of resource insecurity seem to closely follow PTSD, anxiety and depression,” says Wutich.

• The role of climate change in water insecurity, and its impact on mental health, is an area of ​​intense interest.

• the latest IPCC report published earlier this year found that “climate change is expected to have adverse impacts on well-being and further threaten mental health.”
• Droughts, floods, and other weather-related exposures “were associated with psychological distress, worsening mental health, and increased mortality among people with pre-existing mental health problems, increased psychiatric hospitalizations, and increased suicide rates,” the scientists said. wrote last year.
• A small study in Ethiopia found that “insecurity of water leads to extreme worry and fatigue.”

But there are multiple mechanisms. about how climate change can affect someone’s health, says Tarik Benmarhnia, a UC San Diego professor who studies the impact of climate change on health.

• Extreme weather events can directly cause distress or trauma if someone witnesses injury or death. But these events can also affect other mental health factors, including employment, housing and nutrition, says Alessandro Massazza of the Wellcome Trust.
• Drought, for example, can “lead to mental health problems through economic, food and water insecurity, but also indirectly through conflict and war,” says Benmarhnia.
• We need to be “specific about the mechanism so that we can make very specific policies.”

But the data remains a challenge.

• Much of what is known about climate change and mental health comes from studies in Europe, North America, and Australianot the ones often most at risk, Massazza recently wrote.
• “In the most affected communities, we don’t have data,” says Benmarhnia.
• In sub-Saharan Africa, data on community food and water insecurity is collected through surveys conducted by public health officials. “But the mental health data that is typically collected is very limited.”

What to see: Research is growing to better measure water insecurity, technologies to address access, and more knowledge about the relationships between water insecurity, climate change, and mental health.

The bottom line: “Five years ago this was totally ignored. But now, in 2022, it is on the agenda of many institutions and organizations,” says Benmarhnia.

• “It’s been identified as a big, big challenge.”