Extreme Weather Events Have Profound Psychological Effects on Individuals and Communities

In September 2010, BHP Billiton
CEO Marius Kloppers proposed Australia take action on climate change before the
rest of the world to maintain its international economic competitiveness. A
report released by The Climate Institute, offers another key reason for early
action – the maintenance of our mental health and community well-being. The
report highlights that more frequent and more intense extreme weather events
will result not simply in increased destruction of our physical infrastructure
but will have devastating effects on the social fabric of our society. The
effects will be greatest in those smaller rural and regional towns where
catastrophic weather events cause immediate loss of life and destruction of
economic viability. It will also have profound psychological effects on
individuals and the communities in which they live. Ian Hickie in The
Conversation. Read More

Ian Hickie in The Conversation (29
August 2011)

In September 2010, BHP Billiton
CEO Marius Kloppers proposed Australia take action on climate change before the
rest of the world to maintain its international economic competitiveness.

A report released today by The
Climate Institute, offers another key reason for early action – the maintenance
of our mental health and community well-being.

The report highlights that more
frequent and more intense extreme weather events will result not simply in
increased destruction of our physical infrastructure but will have devastating
effects on the social fabric of our society.

The effects will be greatest in
those smaller rural and regional towns where catastrophic weather events cause
immediate loss of life and destruction of economic viability. It will also have
profound psychological effects on individuals and the communities in which they
live.

In recent years in Australia, we
have become more familiar with counting not only the dollar costs of prolonged
drought, bushfires, cyclones and floods but also the emotional and social
costs.

In the short term, there are the
predictable but significant increased rates of anxiety, depression and alcohol
and other substance misuse.

There is additional dislocation
of services and supports to those who were already receiving health care or
social assistance.

In the longer term, the effects
on the community are far more costly and more profound.

In smaller communities, families
and local support networks are often torn apart as individual members need to
seek shelter, employment or education in other locations.

Where the destruction has been
widespread, significant numbers of people may never return to their original
homes or communities. This loss of social cohesion puts individuals in those
settings at much greater risk of longer-term mental health problems.

The report also draws attention
to the likely long-term effects on children, particularly the prospect of
increasing rates of anxiety.

This may not only be a
consequence of direct exposure to life-threatening situations and dislocation
from family and community supports, it’s likely to result from living with that
long-term threat of severe weather events.

Clearly, there’s a need to provide
a cohesive response to these issues to assist with reducing that longer-term
sense of threat.

The report sets a framework for
the need to plan our actions in the future.

At one level, that obviously
involves international and national planning to reduce the likelihood of more
frequent and severe weather events.

Next, we need to be clear about
how we can respond effectively to reduce the adverse impacts of severe weather
events on mental health and social cohesion.

A strong emphasis on backing
community rather than professionally-based responses is essential to that task.

Finally, we need to be clear that
the impacts on mental health are not just short-term but continue for long
periods. In the worst instances, where many people, households, businesses and
community assets have been lost, some communities may never recover.

As Australia is a country that
knows the impacts of severe weather events, and the costs and significance of
mental health for our future social and economic prosperity, we need really to
heed the advice not only of our senior mining executives, but also our climate
scientists and our mental health experts.

Taking appropriate steps earlier
rather than later is clearly in our national interest. If that is before some
of our international colleagues, so be it.

Ian Hickie is a director of ‘headspace’ the national youth mental
health foundation. He is the executive director of the Brain & Mind
Research Institute at the University of Sydney. He is a member of the medical
advisory panel to BUPA health insurance. He has participated in a range of
national mental health advisory panels to the Australian Government and has
conducted educational programs and medical research that has been supported by
pharmaceutical companies that produce antidepressant compounds.

Source: www.theconversation.edu.au

Foreword to the Report by The
Climate Institute:

This timely report addresses a
big gap in the current public debate about climate change and how we should
respond to it. There has been much legitimate concern about economic
consequences and the risks to property, jobs and export earnings, but there has
been a failure to discuss the consequences of climate change for human
wellbeing and health. This is a serious blind spot; it restricts our vision of
possible futures, and the need for urgent and effective action.

There is much research evidence,
in Australia and elsewhere, that recent climate change has already caused
diverse changes in animal and plant ranges, rhythms and reproduction. Some
species are moving, some are struggling, and some are suffering from declining
food supplies. The human species faces similar risks to wellbeing, health and
survival.

Climate change will have many
adverse impacts on Australians’ health—physical risks, infectious diseases,
heatrelated ill effects, food safety and nutritional risks, mental health
problems and premature deaths. The emerging burden of climate-related impacts
on community morale and mental health—bereavement, depression, postevent stress
disorders, and the tragedy of self-harm—is large, especially in vulnerable rural
areas. Across all sectors of the Australian population, mental health (too
often the Cinderella of our public health policy) is vulnerable to the stresses
and disruptions caused by a changing climate and its environmental and social
impacts. Many rural, regional and peri-urban communities are already beginning
to suffer as longer-term environmental changes emerge.

This report will help us understand
the ‘human face’ of climate change; that is, what it means for us, for our sense
of security and that of our friends, our families and our neighbours.  This great and complex human induced
disruption to the global environment is not just ‘somewhere out there’.
Increasingly, climate change will weaken the environmental and social
conditions that underpin our physical and psychological health.

The symptoms we see now, in
individuals and communities beleaguered by fire, storms, floods and drought,
are the early warning signs. There is still time to avoid the human and other
costs of global warming blowing out, time to realise the many health and social
benefits of action, and so time to restore wellbeing and hope.

Tony McMichael AO, MB BS, PhD, FAFPHM, FTSE  Professor of Population Health, and NHMRC
Australia Fellow  National Centre for Epidemiology
and Population Health Australian National University

For the full report go to:

Source: www.climateinstitute.org.au