With temperatures rising and air pollution increasing, climate change poses significant mental health risks across all age groups – with particularly severe impacts on young people, elderly individuals, and marginalized communities.
In this lecture presented by Joshua Wortzel, MD, MPhil, MSEd, Hartford Healthcare Institute of Living and Yale University, we’ll dive into the impacts of climate change on mental health.
Rising temperatures directly increase rates of violence, suicide, and psychiatric hospitalizations. And, people with existing psychiatric conditions face heightened vulnerability due to medication-related thermoregulatory difficulties. Beyond temperature effects, environmental changes contribute to mental health problems through air pollution, disease vector expansion, reduced crop nutrients, and both acute and chronic disaster trauma and existential "climate distress" characterized by anxiety and grief about environmental degradation. Addressing these challenges requires comprehensive therapeutic approaches including patient education, disaster psychiatry training for mental health providers, and development of interventions. Learn how to tackle these issues in this free lecture from Sheppard Pratt.