The document discusses the impacts of climate change on human psychology and mental health. It describes several cases where patients experienced climate change-related delusions, anxiety, or depression. Studies found rates of mental illnesses like depression and PTSD doubled after extreme weather events. Long-term climate change is also expected to increase rates of mental health issues due to events like droughts, floods and rising temperatures. The document also discusses seasonal impacts, with higher suicide rates in spring and winter linked to lower sunlight exposure and temperatures in these seasons. Overall, the evidence suggests climate change could significantly impact global mental health and well-being in both direct and indirect ways.

1. Scanning
Human Psychology
through
Climate Change

2. Last year, an anxious, depressed 17-year-old boy was admitted to the psychiatric unit
at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne. He was refusing to drink water.
Worried about drought related to climate change, the young man was convinced that
if he drank, millions of people would die. The Australian doctors wrote the case up as
the first known instance of "climate change delusion."
Robert Salo, the psychiatrist who
runs the inpatient unit where the
boy was treated, has now seen
several more patients with
psychosis or anxiety disorders
focused on climate change, as
well as children who are having
nightmares about global-
warming-related natural
disasters.

3. Responses include providing psychological interventions in the wake of acute
impacts and reducing the vulnerabilities contributing to their severity;
promoting emotional resiliency and empowerment in the context of indirect
impacts and acting at systems and policy levels to address broad
psychosocial impacts.
Climate Weather
Moderators IMPACTS
Direct & Acute
Impacts
•Extreme Weather
•Heat, Drought, Floods
•Landscape Changes
•Mental Health Issues
•Psychological Trauma
Psychosocial Impacts
•Chronic Disaster Adjustment
•Intergroup Conflict
•Displacement & Migration
•Reaction to Impact Operations
•Decreased Access to Society
•Heat Impact Violence
Indirect Impacts
•Anxiety & Worry
•Depressions
•Unconscious Dilemmas
•Numbness & Apathy
•Grief & Mooring

4. Extreme weather events and environmental stressors associated with
global climate change are likely to have immediate effects on the
prevalence and severity of mental health issues in affected
communities, significant implications for mental health services.
For example, impacts of natural disasters include
Acute and posttraumatic stress disorder
Somatic disorders
Major depression
Drug and alcohol abuse
Higher rates of suicide
Elevated risk of child abuse
Homicide
Mortality

5. Rates of severe mental illness - including depression, PTSD, anxiety disorder,
panic disorder, and a variety of phobias - doubled, from 6.1 percent to 11.3
percent, among those who lived in affected regions, a 2006 study by the
Hurricane Katrina Community Advisory Group said.
Rates of mild-to-moderate mental illness also doubled, from 9.7 percent to
19.9 percent.
"Climate change could have a real impact on our psyches," says Paul Epstein, the associate
director for the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School.
Over this century -
The average global temperature is expected to rise between 1 degrees and 6 degrees Celsius
Glaciers will melt,
Seas will rise,
Extremes in precipitation will occur, according to scientists' predictions. There is evidence that
extreme weather events, such as droughts, floods, cyclones, and hurricanes, can lead to
emotional distress, which can trigger such things as depression or post-traumatic stress
disorder, in which the body's fear and arousal system kicks into overdrive.

6. Seasonal variation of mood, characterized by onset of depression in winter/autumn and its
remission or appearance of mania or hypomania in spring is a well-known entity described in
the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM IV) as seasonal affective disorder (SAD).
The etiology of cyclical changes of mood is believed to be the fluctuation in daylight hours
throughout the year. This is supported by the use of light therapy in the treatment of these
conditions.
The prevalence of this disorder varies with these circuits. This would result in their becoming
less responsive to sudden variations in the discharge of serotoninergic neurons. In a person who
is vulnerable, climate contributes to this biological risk by modifying the responsiveness of the
circuits that control mood and behaviour, and also the frequency and intensity of social
interactions.
A total of 71 227 male suicides and 26 466 female suicides occurring in Italy from 1974 to 2003
were investigated and a significant peak was found in spring. Of different climatic variables,
temperature was found to be positively correlated with suicide rates. Some researchers have
suggested that deviations of monthly mean temperatures from the expected mean temperature
for that time of the year, might be much more important for suicidal death.
Mood with Climate

7. Extrapolating from such preliminary findings, it is likely that global climatic changes may have
a significant impact on various dimensions of mental health and well-being. Northern towns,
as indicated by their latitude, are less exposed to the sun and have lower mean temperatures
(both minimum and maximum) than southern towns. Rainfall levels are higher in the north
than in the south. This influence was more marked in the case of females. One can only
speculate on the link between climates that are dry, little exposed to the sun, and therefore
presumably cold and a higher incidence of suicides as seen in the case of SAD.
It is possible that living in a place with low exposure to the sun might determine an
abnormally persistent stimulation of circuits which use serotonin as a neurotransmitter,
leading to adaptations of robust findings in the epidemiology of schizophrenia.
The hospital admission rates for schizophrenia and “schizoaffective” patients are clearly
increased in summer and fall respectively, as reported in an 11-year study from Israel.
Schizophrenia patients’ mean monthly admission rates correlated with the mean maximal
monthly environmental temperature, indicating that a persistently high environmental
temperature may be a contributing factor for psychotic exacerbation in schizophrenia
patients and their consequent admission to mental hospitals.

9. Human Psychology
Creation of Climate
Changes
Impacts on Human
Psychology
Creation of New Climate
Changes
Impacts on Human
Psychology

10. A nature which can create all entities,
we, the human beings, being a small
entity part can not recreate it.
Think for it…..
Thank You.
Dr. L.K.Chaudhary,
Head of the Dept. Education,
Madanpur-Rampur,Kalahandi