A Conversation About… Climate Change and Mental Health – Part 1

Disclaimer: The following transcript has been autogenerated and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies resulting from the automated transcription process.

Host (00:01):

Hi there. Welcome to Mental Health Professionals Network podcast series MHPN’s aim is to promote and celebrate interdisciplinary collaborative mental health care.

Professor Ann Sanson (00:18):

Welcome to MHPN presents a conversation about climate change and mental health. This is a four-part podcast series that explores the relationship between the climate emergency that we currently face and our mental health. My name is Ann Sanson, and I’d like to start by acknowledging that I’m on the land of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin nation. Sovereignty has never been ceded, and I really want to acknowledge that the climate emergency is impacting on Indigenous people who’ve cared for this land with such care and with such love for 65,000 years. And that land is now under such threat from climate change and with the close connection to the land. I think that is a very significant thing for us to reflect upon. So I’m delighted to be hosting this first episode of this series. Just to introduce myself first, I’m a developmental psychologist by background, and my research has mainly been around how we as parents, communities, as mental health providers can best support children and young people to grow up to be happy, healthy, and productive adults.

(01:29):

But as I became more aware of the climate crisis and how that’s really going to be impacting on the lives of the next generation, I’ve came to the realisation that a basic requirement for anyone to lead a happy, healthy, and productive life is having a habitable planet to live on. And climate change is really risking us not being able to deliver that. So for the last decade, I’ve focused on climate change, particularly on how it’s impacting on children and young people and increasingly will do so and how we can best support them in this context. Across these four episodes, I’ll be joined by Merle Conyer and Susie Burke. So welcome to you both.

Dr Susie Burke  (02:10):

Oh, hi Ann. It’s great to be here. Hello

Merle Conyer  (02:13):

From me too. Lovely to be in conversation with both of you, Ann and Susie.

Professor Ann Sanson (02:17):

So when MHPN first invited me to contribute to this podcast, they asked me to select people that I’d like to join me. And Susie, I invited you because you’ve worked in this area for so long, including really important work with the Australian Psychological Society and with the Australian Red Cross on disaster preparedness and response and so on. And besides that, we’ve worked together for many years writing papers together and running workshops, etc, and it’s always such a delight to work with you.

Dr Susie Burke  (02:49):

Well, thank you, Ann. I was thrilled when you invited me to be a part of the podcast because as you know, talking about climate change and psychology is one of my favourite topics. I’m joining this podcast from my home in Dja Dja Wurrung Country in Central Victoria. And as you said, Ann, I did work for many, many years at the Australian Psychological Society as part of a very productive and excellent team of people, and including yourself as a brains trust on the outside working on climate change and disasters. And you really thoroughly learned a lot about the psychology of climate change and the way which it impacts on us and what we can do about it. Currently, I’m working full-time in private practise and consulting to groups and organisations around climate change, but also doing individual work with people, several of whom present with climate change concerns that we work with in a therapeutic way.

Professor Ann Sanson (03:46):

Thank you, Susie. I know that you’ve got a huge amount to bring to this conversation, and Merl, it’s great to have you here too. One of the reasons that I invited you is because when we worked together on the panel discussion at the recent MHPN conference, I was just really impressed with your wisdom, your clarity of thought, and the breadth of experience that you brought to all of the issues that we are going to be talking about in this series.

Merle Conyer  (04:16):

Many thanks, Ann. It’s a real pleasure being here with you and Susie, you both have been so influential in my own thinking in this area, and I’ve really appreciated over the years access to your materials, your webinars. So being in conversation together now is a real delight. I’m joining this conversation today from Garigal Country where I practise as an independent practitioner working at the intersection of trauma, healing and justice. Most of my work is with service providers, teams, organisations, and communities. And this includes individuals and communities as well as organisations working in the areas or affected and impacted by climate change and extreme weather events. So what got me into this space initially was actually an unexpected moment. I received an email from PACFA, the Psychotherapy Counselling and Federation of Australia requesting abstracts for their 2019 conference. The theme being trauma, it had a plethora of topics and not a mention of the climate, emergency or anything to do with our natural world.

(05:34):

And I really felt compelled to bring these matters for consideration to the therapeutic community. And that really has taken me on my own journey personally and professionally, where I’ve done extensive work with service providers around skill building and awareness. So this is a deep area of commitment and passion. I think that as mental health professionals, we’ve got a really important role to play at this time, that we can provide attuned support to people in communities as we all find our way towards life -affirming actions for all beings on this planet. And that also, I think we have a really important role to stand in solidarity with young people to protect their futures.

Professor Ann Sanson (06:15):

Thank you, Merle. That’s really interesting to hear how you got engaged in this. That sort of silence from many of our professional organisations I think is something we will be talking about throughout the series, won’t we? And how you’ve responded to that is fantastic. So across this series, we’re going to be talking about this nexus between climate change and mental health. What is this nexus? Who does it impact and what does it mean for us in terms of clinical practice and how can we as mental health providers look after our clients as well as ourselves in this global emergency? Today’s episode, we are going to be discussing why from our perspective, the global climate emergency that we’re all facing right now is of such importance for mental health providers. What are the mental health impacts of the emergency? And who is most at risk? So if it’s okay, I thought maybe I would start by just a reminder about this sort of unprecedented situation that we’re in.

(07:17):

The word unprecedented seems to be coming into just about every conversation now, every news bulletin seems to be talking about record breaking temperatures, unprecedented wildfires, the horrible fires in the northern hemisphere in this northern summer, floods, hurricanes, droughts, you name it. As I say, there seems to be some climate related disaster in just about every news bulletin that we hear. I dunno about you, but I used to long for the summer and the lazy hazy days of sunshine and the beach and being in the bush and so on. But for me now, when summer comes along, I really face it with some dread about what’s going to happen in terms of wildfires and droughts and what those impacts are going to be. And of course, we’ve only had 1.2 degrees of warming so far, and all this is happening already, and we know things are going to get worse before they get better. So we’re really at the start of this catastrophic climate change, it seems to me, and I guess the scientists are telling us that we’ve got such a short time in which we all need to respond as a society, as a species to try to avoid the worst of this and to support ourselves and each other in it. And I think mental health providers have got such an important role in that. So after that sort of context setting, maybe Susie, you could start our conversation about what the mental health impacts are of climate change.

Dr Susie Burke  (08:43):

Yeah, sure. Well, I think probably as we were listening to you, we were starting to feel some of those impacts just hearing about the catastrophic current situation and future does awaken a whole lot of really uncomfortable feelings in that surveys show that most people around the world do know about climate change and are worried about it. The qualitative research, which digs into that a little bit deeper, shows that people experience a host of heightened emotions like grief and anger and guilt and dread. And I mean, interestingly, the concerns that people had about the climate crisis were remaining at record highs even during that first year of covid. So when we look at the survey data from that, when we had this pandemic, we didn’t have a vaccination, we didn’t know what was going to happen. People’s levels of climate concern was still at an all time high.

(09:35):

So in general, about three quarters of surveyed populations of people report that they’re fairly or very concerned about climate change. And this actually goes up by about 10% if a person believes that they’ve had a direct experience of climate change, usually in the form of an extreme weather event disaster. And so, yes, over the years, climate concerns are consistently increasing. But I might get Merle to talk a little bit about the climate of the nation 2022 findings first, and then I might come back and talk a little bit more about, what we do mean when we talk about mental health impacts.

Merle Conyer  (10:10):

Sure Susie, what you’ve mentioned, the climate of the Nation Report is an annual report by the Australian Institute, which documents the changing beliefs and attitudes of Australians towards climate change. So it looks at its causes and its impacts and its solutions. Last year, 2022, bear in mind, federal treasury reported that 68% of Australians were under a natural disaster declaration at some time. That’s extraordinary, isn’t it? Indeed. And this is the time that the data I’m going to share with you was being gathered. So the 2022 Climate of the Nation report shows that concern about climate change is at an all time high. 75% of Australians are estimated to be concerned about climate change with 42% very concerned, the top impacts of concern, but 80% of more is drought, then flooding, affecting food supply, bush fires and extinction of both animals and plant species. What this recent report has also shown, which I think is encouraging, that there is broad support for a range of decarbonization policies and climate action.

(11:28):

So the report is showing an interest and a motivation to take action to start mitigating some of those worst effects. And that you were talking about what is also encouraging. Two thirds believe the strata should be a world leader in finding cloud lip solutions. And so there is some optimism about the potential and possibilities that also are present at this time. Susie, I’m wondering if you might have some things to share around impacts, because we’re talking here about both direct and indirect impacts. I know some of the research sometimes speaks to this as a one-two punch that we’re both exposed to these events and hearing about them.

Dr Susie Burke  (12:11):

Yeah, yeah. Well, let me unpack that a little bit. So we talk about the causes of climate change as being direct or gradual or indirect slash precarious. So briefly, direct impacts of climate change are things like the extreme weather event disasters. So the floods, the fires, the hurricanes, typhoons, depending on where you are in the world and what you call it. And then the gradual effects tend to be things like drought and sea level rise and changes in farming communities and all of the flow on effects that those sorts of things have on people and communities, communities being dislocated, people moving away, things like that. And then the indirect effects or vicarious effects, which is often the way in which people in Australia or the majority of people in Australia are actually experiencing climate change is through the social representations or the media representations of climate change.

(13:00):

So it’s about hearing about the threat of climate change, hearing about the threat to people in other parts of the world or in other parts of your country, or hearing about the threats that are predicted or understanding and thinking about climate change as an existential threat to humanity. So those indirect threats often have an enormous impact on our health and wellbeing. But then the other thing to unpack is the mental health impact. So we tend to use this composite term mental health and psychosocial impacts when we’re talking about climate change. So the mental health impacts tend to be the pointy end, the mental health problems. And so we know following extreme weather event disasters, that typically the most common mental health problems that come about are depression, PTSD, complicated grief followed by substance use and other anxiety disorders. And we also know from the research, and of course we’ve got decades of research into the impact of disasters on people’s mental health, is that about 30% of a population can be at risk of developing those mental health problems.

(14:01):

So when you think about the scale of the disasters that can happen, that’s a heck of a lot of people. So that would be the pointy end mental health problems. And then the psychosocial impacts tend to refer to non-clinical indicators of wellbeing. So that’s things like family breakdown or stress or loss of identity or social isolation or strained relationships. And the heightened distress that we’ve been talking about before, that fear and the anger and the guilt and the dread and the grief and the helplessness and the hopelessness and things like that. And new terms have been coined around some of those climate emotions. Ann perhaps you could talk a bit about, because something that I’ve heard you talk about.

Professor Ann Sanson (14:42):

Sure. Yeah. I guess going back to the experience of climate disasters too, I guess the other side of it is that a lot of people tend to be amazingly resilient in that the recovery process over a period of months seems to work for a lot of people if there is enough social support around and things like that. And if their experiences haven’t been too absolutely awful. One thing that interests me is the emerging research about what happens if you experience these things more than once. So what the research is telling us is if you’ve been through a bushfire and another bushfire’s on its way, you don’t say, oh, here comes another bushfire. I know what to do about this. I’ll be fine. But rather, you’ll get to be retraumatized and your psychological reactions tend to be even stronger. And I guess that really resonates with me after reading a paper by Thiery and colleagues, which we’ll put this on our resource list at the end, but they did some modelling comparing somebody who was born in 1960 to somebody who was born in 2020 in terms of the number of climate related disasters they’re likely to experience.

(15:52):

And they looked at droughts and fires and floods and the whole works. And they found in each case, this person born in 2020 will experience many more. And you’ve added them all up. It comes to 24 times as many climate related disasters that they’ll face compared to somebody born in 1960. So if you think of somebody born in 1960, perhaps experiencing one or maybe two climate related disasters in their lives, that means somebody born in 2020 is going to be experiencing somewhere between 24 and 48 climate related disasters in their life. Now it’s getting close to one every one or two years. The capacity for resilience in that sort of context is just so much harder. Anyway, so that’s one thought that I had when you were talking about responses to disasters. I guess the other thing is the sort of vicarious impacts of just knowing about climate disasters.

(16:47):

But when we’re well talked about how what nearly three quarters of Australians had been impacted by a disaster directly in 2022, this line between vicarious and direct impacts is getting a little bit blurred, isn’t it? I guess the term eco anxiety is the one that has really become most popular that we hear talked about in the media particularly. And I don’t know about you, Susie and Merle, but to me that’s a fairly problematic term for a variety of reasons, because what you were saying, Susie, about how people do react to climate change, it’s a lot more than anxiety. Anxiety is certainly there and worry and fear, but it’s also grief and a sense of loss and a sense of helplessness and hopelessness.

Dr Susie Burke  (17:33):

Yes. And anger and guilt

Professor Ann Sanson (17:35):

And guilt. That’s right. Guilt, anger, and frustration by younger people at the lack of action that’s happened. So it seems to me eco anxiety is a problematic term because it’s narrowing what those reactions are too much, and it’s not recognising the breadth of them. So I always think a term, something like climate distress might be a better term for us to be using. Yeah, I agree. I try to use that one as well. Merle have you got comments around that?

Merle Conyer  (18:02):

Just a few additional thoughts there. People speak to me of shame, shame that we as a species have developed a culture and have participated in a culture that has led to this. And so one of the things I think is a really important message to convey is that none of us intended this to happen. We are also inextricably bound into the systems of harm that have led us to the stage, but it wasn’t our intention. And so I think this requires when we think about when we do emotional work, is to acknowledge this level of shame may be present, but also to understand that we are interconnected into systems that have recruited us into this way of being, which then points, I think, to other emotions that can be present when we do do the deep work to face those more challenging emotions that we can find emotions around motivation and determination and hope to take meaningful action in response as we start to unbind ourselves from some of these more harmful ways of being. Also, Susie, just picking up on other comment you made around new language being invented. I think this is really potent because there are emotional states that do not have words within our language. And so there are now new words coming to shape these emotional experiences. And I certainly know when I heard them the first time, and when I offer them to others, they’re so strengthening and affirming to make sense of people’s experiences. I might just offer two examples, so

Dr Susie Burke  (19:39):

Please do.

Merle Conyer  (19:40):

Yeah, we hear a lot about PTSD, but what we are now hearing in this space is pre traumatic stress where people are starting to experience the kinds of difficulties that we would normally see after a traumatic event. We are now seeing it in anticipation of traumatic events. And when you laid out the frequency that is expected going forward, that is a highly understandable response. A second example is a term that comes from a philosopher Glenn Albrecht in New South Wales. I believe it was a term that he coined when he was working with the Hunter Valley community, who at that time were being impacted by the open cut minds. And he joined together two words, solace and nostalgia, solace being places of comfort and retreat and nostalgia where we look to the past for something that was meaningful then, but which we may not have now. So his word, solastalgia means the homesickness we have when we are still living at home because of the environmental degradation. We are in our home, but our home is actually leaving us. So I might refer the listeners to a wonderful collective art project called The Dictionary of Linguistical Reality by two people in the US where there is a collection of these kinds of words that are being coined to represent our felt sense experience of living during these times. Yeah,

Dr Susie Burke  (21:19):

Fantastic. The other thing I was thinking, when we were talking just before also about changing the eco anxiety or climate anxiety to distress, is that actually that’s also a non-pathologizing term because one of the things that comes up a lot in the literature, a lot in the media around anxiety or climate anxiety is to somehow pathologize. This is though if a person is feeling anxious about their climate, that that’s a problem in their psyche. And of course, that’s just so not the case. It’s rational and appropriate and deserved to feel anxious and stressed and dread and guilt and fear and all of those sorts of things around climate change. And so I think that the use of the words eco distress is a very nice non pathologizing term for normalising all of these feelings as well. Merle, I’m wondering if you could talk about who is affected, you know most impacted by the mental health and psycho impacts of climate change?

Merle Conyer  (22:17):

Sure. One of the things that really strikes me is the similarity to what I observed in those early couple of years of the pandemic. What we saw in the pandemic was everyone was affected, but we were all affected very differently. It depended on our social locations and community, our access to resources, access to services. And I think that’s the same when we turn our minds to impacts from the climate crisis that all of us will be affected, but the effects will be different depending on our different circumstances. And why I think this lens is really important, because it means that anyone who comes along to our services, whether or not they specifically are seeking support for the climate crisis, will likely in some way be affected by it. So I might just share a few examples Susie. Children, for example, they’re more vulnerable than adults during environmental disasters and community upheaval. And sometimes there can be compromises to health and education and developmental milestones that can have ongoing consequences.

Dr Susie Burke  (23:26):

Plus the research also shows that they tend to have higher levels of concern than adults as well. So that would also make them a vulnerable group to look at.

Professor Ann Sanson (23:34):

And that’s something we’re going to explore more in the third episode of this series.

Merle Conyer  (23:38):

Yeah, indeed.

Professor Ann Sanson (23:38):

After how children and young people are impacted.

Merle Conyer  (23:40):

Women have got a potentially high vulnerability during hotter weather. Pregnant women are more vulnerable to overheating, which increases risks to the health of the fetus. And also, there are well established trends that during extreme weather events, women become more at risk, domestic violence and of sexual trafficking,

Dr Susie Burke  (24:04):

Plus another interjection. Surveys also show that women tend to have higher levels of climate concern than men. So that’s another sort of general finding.

Merle Conyer  (24:11):

And if I may then add to it, we know that women of colour will probably bear the brunt because of the actions that women often need to take to keep their families safe in these very difficult circumstances. Also, there may be some groups that normally we would not think of as mental health providers as potentially being at risk for mental health concerns. So I’m thinking about people who depend on the natural world for their livelihoods and for their incomes. So they’ll be significantly impacted by hotter weather patterns and emergency events and degrading ecosystems such as farmers, fishing communities, tourist operators, garden landscapers, outdoor labourers, will all be affected. And then I actually hold great concern for scientists, scientists who have been burdened with the knowledge for decades of research, who’ve been tracking and reporting on the trends that have been observed, and on the forecast that we are now seeing are even more severe than some of the more conservative views held.

Dr Susie Burke  (25:22):

And I think Merle just add to that the activists as well in the literature come up along with the scientists at being those that tend to have higher levels of fear and grief and hopelessness. So yes, spot on.

Merle Conyer  (25:33):

Definitely. There’s also a particular exacerbation for First Nations communities. So for communities who have close connection with country, close connection with the land and with ecosystems, there are impacts to traditional lifestyles, to cultural practices. There’s loss of sacred sites. When we hear of the mass fish deaths of the rivers, those are totem animals. And we now know that some First Nations communities are losing ancient languages when there are words that are attached to landforms that are disappearing. So I think it’s really important that as mental health professionals, that we realise that this is also a social justice issue in that the most vulnerable in our communities, and often those who have least contributed to this are actually going to be bearing the brunt of some of the ongoing impacts. And our hope is that this will pique everyone’s curiosity to return for our next episodes to explore some of these implications in more detail.

Professor Ann Sanson (26:32):

Yeah, I think you’re quite right. Good to raise this social justice issue. And I guess we ought to also remember that of course, people in the developing world, the majority world, are at more risk than we are here in Australia. We are into high risk here, but we do have better infrastructure for responding than people in many other countries where the majority of the world’s population obviously live. And I think bearing that in mind is important for us as well. And I guess the other group that I would also like to think about is any of us who’ve got responsibilities for the next generation as parents, grandparents, teachers, or whatever, knowing that it’s going to be their lives that are going to be dramatically impacted all the way through.

Merle Conyer  (27:16):

Indeed. And if I might also just add that for people with existing mental health conditions and existing medical conditions, so there’s a heightened risk. We know from really well-established research that extreme weather events correlate with more hospital admissions for self-harm, for schizophrenia, for suicidal ideation, more use of alcohol and drugs, and that some of our mainstream mental health medication may potentially become less stable as our weather hits beyond the 35 degrees. So there are also direct implications to people carrying mental and physical health concerns.

Professor Ann Sanson (27:54):

Yeah. Well, thanks Susie and Merle for those reflections. I think it’s really shown that there are very many ways in which climate change is a mental health issue, and so very relevant to us as mental health providers. I think that’s more or less taken us to the end of this first episode. So thank you to Susie and Merle, and to our listeners for joining us in this episode of MHPN Presents a conversation on climate change and mental health. So you’ve been listening to me Ann Sanson

Merle Conyer  (28:30):

And me Merle Conyer

Dr Susie Burke  (28:32):

And me Susie Burke.

Professor Ann Sanson (28:34):

And we hope you’ve enjoyed this conversation as much as we have, although it’s a tough conversation in many ways as well, but such an important one. In the next episode, we’re going to discuss how we might think about our models of clinical practice, both at an individual level and at a community level, how they might need to change or pivot to respond to the climate emergency. If you want to learn more about Merle, Susie or me, or if you want to access any of the resources we’ve referred to, go to the landing page for this episode and follow the hyperlinks. I know that MHPN really values your feedback. So on the landing page, you’ll also find a link to a feedback survey. So please follow this link and let us know whether you found this episode helpful, provide any comments or suggestions to us or about how MHPN can better meet your needs. So thank you for your commitment to an engagement with interdisciplinary person-centered mental health care, and it’s goodbye

Merle Conyer  (29:38):

From me

Dr Susie Burke  (29:39):

And me

Professor Ann Sanson (29:40):

And me. So please join us for the next podcast conversation in this series, which will be released on Wednesday fortnight.

Host (29:50):

Visit mhpn.org.au to find out more about our online professional program, including podcasts, webinars, as well as our face-to-face interdisciplinary mental health networks across Australia.