A Conversation About… Climate Change and Mental Health – Part 2

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, which is a four-part series, which is exploring the relationship between the climate emergency that we currently face and our mental health. My name is Ann Sanson and I’m coming to you from Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Country in Melbourne. And I’d like to acknowledge elders past and present and acknowledge their sovereignty over the land has never been ceded. I think it’s really important to be thinking about Indigenous people when we’re talking about climate change because they’ve cared for this land for so many thousands of years, and that land is now under such threat from climate change and the impacts on Indigenous people I think are going to be significant. They also have an awful lot to teach us about how to care for the land, which we really need to be learning from and valuing their wisdom.

(01:13):

I’m delighted to be hosting this second episode in this podcast series. I’m particularly pleased to be doing this because as a developmental psychologist by background, I’m so concerned about how today’s generation of younger people and the next generation to come are going to cope and survive what’s ahead of us. And I think that how we respond as mental health professionals is so critically important to that challenge. Across the four episodes, I’ll be joined by Merle Conyer and Susie Burke, who have both got a lot of experiences as mental health practitioners to share with us, so welcome to you both.

Dr Susie Burke      (01:51):

Hi Ann. Thank you very much. It’s good to be back.

Merle Conyer (01:54):

Hello, Anne. Thank you.

Professor Ann Sanson  (01:56):

Good to have you here. When MHPN invited me to contribute to this podcast, they asked me to find people who I’d really like to join me, and that was quite an easy decision for me. Susie, I invited you because you’ve done such important work with the Australian Psychological Society and the Australian Red Cross and lots of other organisations as well as your current work around climate change and have contributed so much. And we’ve worked together writing papers together and running workshops together and things like that for ages, and it’s always such a delight to work with you. I really hoped that you would agree to come along and I was delighted when you said that you would.

Dr Susie Burke      (02:38):

Thank you Ann. I wonder if you’ve realised that I always say yes whenever you ask me to do anything. So of course I would say yes to the delight of being able to talk about my favourite topic. Yeah, so I’m joining you this podcast today from my home in Dja Dja Wurrung Country in central Victoria. And Ann, you mentioned the Australian Psychological Society where I worked for 17 years, very happily in a team on climate change and on disasters and through my work there, but also through the work that I’ve done with you collaborating with papers and things like that, we’ve produced quite a lot of, I think a really useful, helpful resources. So we can pop them in the notes for the podcast and people can go and have a look if they’re interested in following up some of the literature and the materials that we’ve produced. So I’m currently no longer working at the Australian Psychological Society, but I work in private practise. So I’ve got sort of a continuing research interest through the work that I do, mostly with you, Ann, around writing papers on the topic of climate change, but also working with individuals and with communities and groups on climate change and other concerns as well.

Professor Ann Sanson  (03:47):

Thanks, Susie. I know you’ve got a huge amount of experience to share with us and Merle, it’s great to have you here too. And I guess my main reason for inviting you, besides really liking the things that you’ve written and that I’ve come across over the years and various other points of contact, it was when we were working together on the panel for the recent MHPN conference where I was just really struck by your wisdom and clarity of thought and the great ideas and intuitions I guess, and perceptions that you have around this area, which is going to contribute to all the things we’re going to be discussing in this series.

Merle Conyer (04:26):

Thank you so much. And I think I’m following in Susie’s footsteps in that I said yes to the invitation in a heartbeat, and I’ve really enjoyed the first episode together, and I am delighted that we’ve got three more conversations in this particular series. So I’m joining you from Garigal Land. I’m up in the northeast corner of Sydney saltwater country, also pay my respects to the custodianship of this country, this land of Australia for so many generations. And I appreciated your saying of how much wisdom is generously being offered to support us all to walk together in the journey that we are all facing now. So my work is as an independent practitioner, I work at the intersection of trauma, healing and justice in all sorts of contexts, primarily with service providers, teams, organisations and communities, including in this area of climate change and also with people who are protectors of our natural world, who are so at risk of burnout and difficult sometimes political context, how to provide support and wellbeing that people can stay well as they take action to protect the world on our behalf. I really feel that as mental health professionals, we’ve got such an important role to play at this time, both in supporting people who may consult with us, but as active citizens to take steps to really stand in solidarity to protect the future of young people and this precious planet that we are on. So my thanks to both of you for your leadership in this space and for your commitment, and I’m really looking forward to this conversation.

Professor Ann Sanson  (06:14):

Thanks very much, Merle. It’s great to have you here and with all of that experience that you’re bringing as well. So across this series we’re going to be chatting about the nexus between climate change and mental health. What is the nexus? Who does it impact and how and what does it mean for clinical practise and how can we as mental health providers look after our clients as well as ourselves in this global emergency? And as Merle said, the importance of us not only as mental health professionals, but also as citizens, what our roles might be. So in the previous episode, we discussed why we should be understanding the climate crisis as a global emergency from which no one is safe, what the mental health impacts are from the emergency, and who’s particularly at risk. Today’s episode is going to be focusing on how our models of clinical practise at both an individual level, at a group level can and perhaps should pivot to respond to the climate emergency.

(07:16):

And I think Susie and Merle, you both going to have so much that you can offer on this. So it seems like there’s still a bit of a conspiracy of silence around the climate emergency, isn’t it? There’s still, even though we hear about it in every news bulletin of the latest climate disaster, we don’t really have it as part of our conversations, our professional conversations, and sometimes even our personal conversations very much despite the fact we know that so many people are worried about it. I suspect that happens also in the consulting room. So I guess my question, and maybe Susie, you could start us off on this is how we do talk about this elephant in the room with our clients.

Dr Susie Burke      (08:00):

Okay, thank you. Yes. Well, I thought we might just unpack a little bit more about that conspiracy of silence because what you were saying is certainly born out in the research. So studies do show that most people are not talking about climate change with people. They’re not talking about it daily, they’re not talking about it weekly, and they’re often not even talking about it monthly despite how often we might be hearing it turn up on the radio. And the research that looks into why that is so comes up with a number of different theories. I mean, it’s a hard thing to talk about sometimes. You don’t want to be the downer, bring the conversation into a miserable space, by talking about it. Or it might be because you’re worried about what other people think about it and you might think that other people don’t share your concerns about climate change, which is a terrible misperception, but a very common misperception.

(08:45):

The research shows that very clearly as well. There’s this values perception gap where people tend to think that a much smaller number of people are concerned about the climate crisis than actually you truly are. And so that dreadful misperception leads to this collective silence and a collective silence around something as dangerous and damaging as climate change is a really dangerous thing to have for those reasons. And also based on the research that we know, that usually at least three quarters of a population are concerned and worried about climate change. We have to assume that the clients that are coming to see us are actually also worried about climate change. Now it’s kind of a bit easier for me because most people know that I’m a climate change therapist in that I’m very interested in talking about this. So I’ll often get people that will come in and sit down in the chair and say, I’m really worried about climate change.

(09:38):

And so it often comes up, but for many of our listeners, that might not necessarily be the case that people are coming into their clinic knowing that this is a person that I can easily and safely talk about climate change. So yes, when we were discussing our thoughts about this podcast, we were talking about how important it is to find ways of being able to raise this with clients. And Merle you had developed a very interesting practise in your intake interview or in your intake forms. I think it’s really useful for people to hear about.

Merle Conyer (10:10):

Yeah, so I don’t use forms. I do much more of a dialogue, but I have as a standard practise now including a question about a person’s relationship with nature. And then I invite rich descriptions of this. So we ask about so many other aspects of people’s identities and of their relationships, but mostly I think engaging in conversations around our relationship with the natural world is simply absent part of that conspiracy of silence. So ways that I might go and then develop this is if somebody speaks for example of a place in nature that is special to them, I will invite a relationship conversation. So I’ll invite them to richly describe their relationship with the place, how they first met, how they’ve engaged in that particular space, and to tell some stories. How did they care for the place, how does the place care for them?

(11:07):

What have they learned from the place? Or where I then will take these conversations is we speak so much about identity, but we don’t actually speak about an environmental identity and all of us have one, whatever our position, whether we care passionately and are making changes to our lifestyles to protect earth or whether we’re oblivious to the threat and we don’t care what happens to the natural world as we exploit it. Each of these is actually an environmental identity, and so much of therapeutic work is can include reflections on our identities and exploring our preferred identities and how to live authentically from these places. So those initial conversations in the early stage of meeting people about their relationship with the natural world can lead and open and make space for conversations such as around relationship with animals, with places and their own environmental identity and preferred ways of expressing that identity in their day-to-day.

(12:11):

It’s a really powerful way for connecting to values, commitments, meaning. And then for some who may feel really isolated, because as you said Susie, there may be a perception that other people don’t care, that isolation can be a real sense of distress. And so when people are able to articulate around these and have the language and be affirmed, it makes it more possible then to seek out others who share similar values and commitments. And what I’m really interested from both of you as well is we know that the research shows that our resilience is so significantly supported when we can find others and take meaningful action together with others informed by those deep meanings of values and commitments.

Dr Susie Burke      (13:00):

The other thing I was thinking as I was listening to you and your intake conversation with people, I’ve started doing that since you had mentioned it, asking people about their experience of nature in my intake interview, and they sort of settle back and lighten up because they can actually answer that question. Whereas when I ask them what are they doing to exercise, they often look blank and go, I think that’s part of my problem. But the other thing that I was thinking that I do as well is I’m very obvious about what my values are and what I care about. And so when people come in through my front gate, they’ve already had to pass a climate action sign on my gate, and they vote yes for the referendum sign on the gate as well, so they know who they’re coming into. But the other thing that I find opportunities to do,

(13:46):

and I do think that I do have a special talent for actually turning a conversation about anything into a conversation about climate change. So it does make it a little bit easier, but I’ll always find some way of being able to use climate change as an example. So if I’m doing work around stress and I’m differentiating between stressors and stress in the body, and I’m talking about how to complete the stress cycle, an example of that I’ll always use as a stressor will be climate change. It’ll often be my first one. And so in that way, I am also always bringing the awareness of the climate crisis into the room and so that people realise that there’s an opening there for us to be able to talk about that.

Merle Conyer (14:30):

It’s so heartening to hear you say all of that, Susie, because one of the things that are sometime ago contemplated is, is it okay for us as therapists to name this and do we risk actually hijacking what it is the client may be there to discuss? And I’ve taken a very clear position on this that I think it is really important we don’t collude with the sides and that we can bring it into the space. And I think it’s important that we move away from psychologies which locate distress in individuals and where we sit with that focus in the therapeutic room without taking to account the wider world that we are in and that we do open these wider conversations. And one might be, someone might speak about today’s a really hot day, and I might say something like, yes, the climate is really changing. We are having far more of these now aren’t we. It’s leading a space for someone to either enter the conversation or not, but it’s been named and there’s an invitation there. I actually think as therapists, we have got a duty of care to invite these conversations, but to do it in such a way where we don’t usually push a position but we stop the silence that is otherwise sitting in the room. What would it mean if we held the silence? What does that mean about ethics of caring and practise? So thanks Susie. I really appreciate you sharing what you’ve done, it’s reassuring to hear a similar ethic.

Professor Ann Sanson  (16:05):

It’s lovely to hear both of you all approaches. To opening up the space for talking about climate change. And I think, well, what you’re saying there is that it really is an obligation on us to be opening that space to talk about climate change partly because it may be part of our client’s concerns whether or not it’s acknowledged. But even if it’s not a concern now, we do know that it’s going to have such an impact on their lives. Virtually everybody’s lives in the future and a much huger impact than the pandemic, which was terrible for so many people in so many ways. But we are learning how to live with covid and we can’t learn to how to live with runaway climate change without facing catastrophe. So when you talk about a duty of care, it does seem to me that’s quite a powerful argument.

Dr Susie Burke         (16:51):

I had just written duty of care on my notes, just a reminder to myself to jump in and then I heard Merle say it. I thought, oh, good, she’s covered it. Yes, I absolutely think it’s our responsibility to be able to talk with people about the, perhaps we would call them the macro threats around the future of our planet, the future of lives as we know it. It’s a great opportunity.

Merle Conyer (17:18):

Yeah. The other thing which I’ve been doing, and I’m really interested to hear if either of you have taken your minds down this path, I’ve started interrogating the clinical modalities I use to look at how they can be really relevant in this phase. So can I give you a couple of examples perhaps of where my thinking is developing in this area?

Professor Ann Sanson  (17:41):

That would be fantastic. Yes, please.

Merle Conyer (17:43):

So for example, attachment theory, which I’m imagining many listeners that you’ll be working as well with attachment theory. I think it’s really relevant in this space. When we think about our relationship with the natural world, do we feel a secure attachment, an avoidant attachment, an ambivalent attachment, or a disorganised attachment style? And once we have a sense of our relational attachment style, what are some of the ways of developing in relationship with nature that we can move towards more experiences of secure attachment, including in these difficult times? So one example that may sound entirely paradoxical that I’m talking about moving to more of a secure relationship, I can just speak from my own experience that as I came to wake up to my own separation from nature, which actually occurred in 2015, I was walking in the desert with Aboriginal rangers in Western Australia and came to realise my deep separation from nature, which was a source of profound grief.

(18:47):

But what that also has opened is a moving towards relationship with nature and the deep caring. So I think this is a paradoxical place that as we open our hearts to that connection and caring, so we open our hearts to the grief. But I do think ideas around attachment theory can help us sometimes in the journey of understanding some of the separation towards more of a, a more secure loving, supported kind of attachment relationship. So that’s one example. Another example comes from polyvagal theory. So informed by the neuroscience and what we know from polyvagal theory that provides a framework for thinking about how do our nervous systems organise around safety and danger. And when we are feeling safe, the social nervous system or the ventral vagal state is activated. But when we experience danger, that’s when we have that activation of the fight, flight and freeze responses.

(19:50):

Now we know that flight is not an option with climate change. The effects of global, heating are here and they’re just going to accelerate. Freeze is what we don’t want because freeze is a crippling type of anxiety where we feel trapped and powerless. So what I’ve taken from polyvagal is what I find most resourceful is the blended state of fight with the ventral vagal. In other words, to find others who care similarly, to feel the bond of relationships, safe relationships of others who care, and then to channel that fight energy towards positive and purposeful action. And so I’ve had recently some feedback in a webinar I gave that they hadn’t anticipated an activism inclusion when talking about therapeutic ways of considering the climate crisis. But I actually feel that the neuroscience guides us to the positive protective function of taking meaningful action in relationships with others who are similarly committed. So I’m just curious how your thoughts for these kinds of thinking, trying to interweave our very classical clinical models to make sense and give meaning in this space.

Dr Susie Burke      (21:12):

Yeah, I think that’s fascinating Merle. I love hearing you talking about those two models of care or therapeutic orientations and how you use them to frame the climate crisis. And just picking up on your question back to us about the activation made me think about some of the models that I use as well. I often am using the transactional stress and coping model, which was developed by Folkman and Lazarus in the eighties last century. When I was writing my PhD, I was just studying them. They have looked at these three different types of coping, problem-focused coping meaning focus, coping and emotion-focused coping. So emotion-focused coping is the sorts of things that we do to emotionally regulate ourselves. So to deal with the distressing emotions that are coming up in response to the stress. Also, that might be things like chatting to a friend or having a cry or having some time out or spending time in nature or having a shower or getting a massage or doing those sorts of soothing things to reduce our arousal, emotion focused coping.

(22:19):

And then the second type in there in no particular order is the problem focus coping strategy. So these are the things where you actually are doing something actively about the problem that is causing the stress. So if the stress is caused by climate change, then problem focus coping would be all the mitigation or adaptation. But I always tend to push people or suggest people head in the direction of mitigation first. Let’s still try to reduce the temperatures before we resign ourselves to just having to adapt to it. So that would be anything like the household behaviours, but also the group behaviours that people can engage in joining climate action groups, going on protests, writing to politicians, all those sorts of things that are actually about taking action. So there is some of the fight I guess that you’re talking about in that polyvagal sympathetic nervous system response.

(23:09):

And then the third one, meaning focus coping strategies. I suppose an easiest way to think about it is the ways in which we use our thinking to think differently about the problem so that we feel more optimistic about the problem. And so those would be things like noticing how many other people around the world are also concerned about this and doing something about the problem of climate change. Or it might be thinking about how other problems in the past of which we have many examples like slavery and apartheid and the women’s suffragette movement and all of those big social issues, how they’ve been tackled, been terribly difficult, decades and decades of people working tirelessly to bring about a better future with a positive outcome. So thinking about those examples and using them to take heart around how our efforts to continue to work on addressing climate change and reducing emissions and transforming into a zero carbon economy can be and will be effective.

(24:09):

And the other one is acceptance and commitment therapy. So many of our listeners will be very familiar with all of these approaches. But the thing about ACT, acceptance and commitment therapy is that the aim of that is dedicating life to living as meaningfully as possible. And there’s these three main aspects. One is opening up to feelings, one is being in the present moment, and the third one is doing what matters. So working out what our core values are, what’s the most meaningful thing, and then acting in line with those values. So if we think for a moment about the opening up to feelings aspect of it, what we are trying to do in ACT is to help people to be able to make room for their feelings and to allow their feelings and to stop trying to control those uncomfortable feelings like anxiety and accept them as an unavoidable aspect of existence.

(24:57):

And acceptance also means understanding that on a deeper level, the climate crisis hasn’t altered the fundamental facts of human existence, and we were always destined to die. And the climate crisis isn’t a death sentence. I read this in an article which we could also attach to the notes by Guthrie on, I think it was called Act and the Eco Apocalypse. So act being Acceptance and commitment therapy. And what Devin was saying was that the climate crisis isn’t the death sentence, life is the death sentence, and the human species wouldn’t have lasted forever anyhow. And so when people truly understand that their life is limited, then they can commit to what truly matters to them and live a life filled with meaning for however long they have left. And so we tend to find that when people are able to accept that inevitability of life, which is just the same with the climate crisis as it always has been, we were always destined to have a limited amount of time to be alive, then we find that people are more grateful to be alive.

(25:54):

They place higher value on intrinsic values, on meaningful personal interactions. They have more post-traumatic growth, and it lets people live more fully. So I use Act a lot with people, and it’s the work in the looking at the values that helps people identify their core values, which are often around sustainability or responsibility or respect or fairness, all of which are an important part of addressing the climate crisis and then finding the actions that line up with those values rather than being jerked around by their feelings and trying to do things that assuage their feelings. So that’s another example.

Professor Ann Sanson  (26:33):

Those are fantastic examples for both of you of ways of using models that we already have to address the climate crisis. I really love the connection with nature that Merle in particular was talking about and all of those theories. I think it’s very rich, what you’ve just told us. I think I’m going to have to listen to this episode myself several times to get my head around all those possibilities, but with the coping. So moving people beyond the ineffective coping strategies of denial and avoidance that so many people are still in, I think is a really important thing too. So that’s lots of ideas in terms of your one-on-one work with clients, maybe we can talk a bit about more group-based collective and community-based practises. Because I guess when I think about this and the level of need, we’re going to have for mental health support as the climate crisis deepens. It seems to me that one-on-one therapy is going to become a bit of a luxury. We really need to be finding ways of supporting people at a larger scale and building on community and collective approaches. So maybe you could talk both Merle and Susie briefly about some of the practises that you’ve used.

Merle Conyer (27:42):

Yes, certainly. Thank you Ann. I really appreciate how you brought into this conversation the idea of collective practises, because we already know that the privileging of the individualised models of care we have in place are really not adequate. And to continue down this path is just going to lead far too many people without support. And so I really do think that as mental health practitioners, it’s really necessary for us to start examining how we can move towards more community-based work, but also collective trauma is well supported through collective healing and collective spaces. I think there’s a lot of foundational research as well that points us to these areas. So this is where I’m actually doing most of my work around the climate crisis is in collective spaces. And I might just give it a few examples. The first is, and this is a real particular love for me, and that’s doing intergenerational work.

(28:47):

I noticed from speaking with people, particularly young people, there was a sense of an isolation from the adults in their lives. And what were safe ways to start to broach these intergenerational conversations. So what I do in community context is bring together groups of families, and I draw on a narrative therapy practise called The Tree of Life, and we set an intention for our day together. And so it might be a meaningful question such as how do we as a family want to respond to the climate crisis together? And then what the process involves is drawing the shape of a tree and then writing into the tree a different representation. So the roots represents the lineage, culture, ancestry, and other influences that have shaped the family on the ground. It’s about their life today, their current location, their activities and connections in relation to the question onto the trunk.

(29:49):

They write their skills, their values, talents, and commitments into the branches to write their hopes and their dreams and their wishes for the future. The leaves include the names of people, other beings, animals, places significant relationships. The fruits are represented to the legacies and gifts that the family have received from others that have led to this particular inquiry. And the flowers, the writing into the flowers are the gifts and legacies they wish to leave with others. This as a scaffold is a really powerful process. We’re having conversations in all sorts of contexts, but it also leaves something that’s very embodied that that family or the community group who’s doing it can actually take it away. It becomes a really strong anchor of shared intentions. Another example was a pilot programme that I did with Relationships Australia with a particular community. And this was a vision of a therapist, Kylie Hitchman, who led the initiative.

(30:54):

We co-facilitated a six week group, three hour per session called Resilience in a Changing Climate. And what we did was we offered experiential activities where the participants were able to explore their emotions and to find pathways reducing distress, and to share their lived experience and wisdom with each others. Some of the people were very active in communities, so we took some time to speak about practises to reduce burnout so that they could stay well while they were taking the steps that were very meaningful in their lives. One of our hopes was that the workshops would support people to feel empowered to have conversations with families and friends, and also more confident in supporting the young people in their lives. And so we designed different initiatives to support that too. And one of these was a experiential exercise around the concept of acts of hope. This is a concept that some of the listeners may know from the work of Joanna Macy and Chris Johnston who speak about hope not as a noun, but as a verb, that with acts of hope, it’s about how we act in accordance with our values and the kind of world we hope to see in the future.

(32:08):

And we can act in those ways, including when we are feeling despair. In the newest iteration of their most recently published book, I love the way they describe different ways of enacting actor pope. Firstly, we can turn up ways with intention for playing our part. It’s what we turn away from. So making choices about behaviours, ways of being that are toxic to wellbeing of life on earth, and turning towards expressions of sustaining ways of being. So one of the things that the participants took away was their commitments around turning up, turning away from turning towards. And when we gathered as a group sometime beyond, people were able to check in with each other how they were going with these commitments. So there was something that became sustaining and then integrated into their lives as they worked individually and collectively within their community. There’s more I can share, but I wonder at the stage, perhaps, Susie, I’m mindful that you’re doing some important work with communities too, and I’m really curious to hear some more.

Dr Susie Burke      (33:15):

Oh, well, that sounds amazing. I’m like, Ann, I’m going to have to this podcast to take further notes of those examples that you were just skewing then, even though I’ve heard you talk about them before. I was thinking when you were talking about the Tree of Life, I was thinking, oh, I think I have a little bit more cool with my participants in my workshops with. I’ll often, might just share an example of something that I might use as an opening and then as a closing exercise. The cool one is my opening exercise. So I will often get people to do open sentences where they’ll pair up and I’ll get them to begin a sentence with a phrase like, what keeps me awake at night? Or What breaks my heart about the climate crisis is, or what I feel most guilty about is. And the idea of doing those open sentences is to have people have an opportunity to be able to explore some of the things that really are distressing them and to awaken and bring out some of the emotions, because as Joanna Macy says, it’s enlivening to go to the depths of our feelings and to discover that the pit is in fact not bottomless. So I’ll do that, and then when people are feeling dreadful, I’ll

(34:28):

then do an act to exercise with them as a group where I’ll get them to close their eyes and it’s an open up breathe to expand exercise, which many of you listening will be really familiar with. So getting them to locate where the feeling is in their body or the different places that they might be feeling that feeling of anguish or grief or despair or fear or whatever. And to be able to sort of physicalize it to be able to notice what it feels like, what its substance is, what its colour is, what its temperature is, whether it’s moving, and then to be able to breathe around it and to make more room for that feeling. So in that way, fully accepting that that feeling is there. And all you need to do is notice search and make room for it and allow it to be there.

(35:12):

So I’ll do that for them as an exercise. And then one of my closing exercises, which is a new one I’ve just come up with is based on theatre sports. So I’m a great fan of theatre sports and improvisation using imagination. And there’s a lot of the literature that talks to us about how imagination is actually our most important asset in getting ourselves through this crisis and being able to transform our societies and our economy. And so this exercise follows a theatre sports game called No, you didn’t. Or, oh, that’s nothing, which anybody who knows theatre sports will know, and the rest of you won’t know. But I won’t go into that at the moment. But the version that is a more optimistic version based on the climate research is called What If. So Rob Hopkins, who was the founder of the Transition Town Movement, has written a book recently called From What Is To What If.

(36:06):

And he gets people to use this question of, well, what if? And one of the examples he gave in his book was, what if you could swim in the River Thames, which it would be a bit like swimming in the Yarra River in Melbourne would be like, oh, no, that’s actually quite disgusting. But what if you could, and what would that entail that we would also need to address and look at? And so the game is that one person starts by saying something like, what if there was a restaurant in town that entirely used protein that was not coming from animals that had a really low carbon footprint, and you then elaborate and that everybody that came there was introduced to this new protein, which is actually already available. It’s already been produced in Finland and Singapore. You can go on. And then somebody else then has an idea interrupts and says, and what if, oh, yes, that’s something and, and then they come up with their own imagination about another possible future. Because what we know is that when we can dream of a future that maybe doesn’t exist yet, but that example I gave you almost does exist, and you then get excited about it, you’re then more likely to think about the paths that it would take to actually get there, and then you’re more likely to actually put the action into making those things happen. So it’s a very enlivening sort of energising, sometimes silly, sometimes a bit creative, but inspiring sort of way to finish a workshop. So just offer that.

Professor Ann Sanson  (37:35):

Those are very lovely examples from both Merle and Susie. I was going to talk about some of the work that I do, but I’ll save that for another episode. But I really love the hope and the action and the solution focused work that both of you are doing. But I think we are about at the end of our time for this episode. So thank you to our listeners for joining us on this episode of MHPN Presents, a conversation about climate change and mental health. Many thanks to both Merle and to Susie. So you’ve been listening to me, Ann Sanson, to Merle Conyer, and to Susie Burke. We hope you’ve enjoyed this conversation as much as we have. In the next episode, we’ll be talking particularly about children and youth in the climate emergency, the ones who are going to be really living through this, what the research tells us about their reactions to the emergency, how parents and mental health providers can respond to their needs.

(38:33):

And the fourth episode will focus on us, including looking after ourselves as well as our clients and our communities. So if you want to learn more about Merle, Susie, or me, or if you want to access the resources we’ve referred to, you can go to the landing page of this episode and follow the hyperlinks. I know that MHPN really values your feedback. So on the landing page, you’ll find a link to a feedback survey, and if you follow that, you’ll be able to let us know whether you found this episode helpful, provide comments or suggestions about how we and MHPN can best meet your needs. So thank you for your commitment to and engagement with interdisciplinary person-centered mental health care. And it’s goodbye from me,

Merle Conyer (39:17):

from me

Dr Susie Burke      (39:18):

And me.

Professor Ann Sanson  (39:19):

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

Host (39:28):

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.