CNBC
- Catherine Clifford
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Sarah Lowe is a clinical psychologist and assistant professor in
the department of social and behavioral sciences at Yale School of
Public Health. Photo courtesy Jeffrey R. Moran
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Key Points - Sarah Lowe is a clinical psychologist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Yale School of Public Health, and she spoke with CNBC about climate trauma and climate anxiety.
- Climate change disasters can cause trauma. Communities, individuals and organizations should do what they can to prepare for potential disasters.
- Climate change anxiety results in intense emotions that are valid. Lowe shares advice for when to recognize that anxiety has become problematic.
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Climate change is changing how human beings live on the earth as floods,
wildfires and extreme weather change the land and destroy property.
Living with climate change as a constant threat on the horizon has also changed
how human beings think about their own existence.
Both kinds of distress — the acute trauma of immediate disasters and the
background sense of existential doom — require different responses, both
personal and from society.
Sarah Lowe
is a clinical psychologist and assistant professor in the department of social
and behavioral sciences at Yale School of Public Health, and she spoke with CNBC
about both of these impacts on human wellness.
The following are excerpts of Lowe’s conversation with CNBC. They have been
edited for brevity and clarity.
Climate disasters and trauma
Virtually every state has been affected by some sort of climate change exposure,
whether it’s a weather related disaster, or a wildfire, tornado or whatnot.
Disasters are fundamentally stressful. And for some people, they can be
traumatic both directly — by leading to direct threats to one’s life, for
serious injuries, bereavement, destruction of one’s property — or indirectly. We
know (and this is true with the pandemic as well, just as an aside) that when
people are faced with stressful situations, some people who might have a
tendency for aggression and violence can be tipped due to stress.
Rates of child abuse and intimate partner violence and things like that tend to
increase in the aftermath of disasters, as well as extreme heat, so that’s
another form of trauma that happen in the aftermath of disasters.
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Gypsy Rick smokes a cigarette outside of a cooling shelter during a
heat wave in Portland, Oregon, U.S., August 11, 2021.
REUTERS/Mathieu Lewis-Rolland
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For people who don’t face serious life threats, it is stressful if if part of
your property floods or your property or possessions get damaged, or if you have
to evacuate for an unknown period of time — that is very disruptive, especially
with the idea that this could be a regular thing that you have to deal with.
In terms of the mental health consequences, we know that PTSD can result from
disasters. Disasters are also associated with increased rates of a variety of
psychiatric conditions and symptoms: depression, generalized anxiety, substance
use, disruptions and health behaviors, like healthy eating and exercise. And
these can all have downstream impacts on mental health in the long term.
There are the physical consequences of disasters such as exposure to mold or to
wildfire smoke. The sedentary behavior that might come from disruptions and
routines can trigger physical health ailments or increase the risk of them —
that then are intertwined with mental health. In addition to the direct traumas
of disasters, they can have other mental health consequences that might not be
as obvious.
Preparing for a direct climate change disaster
One thing that is key is preparation at many different levels to the extent that
people are able. It’s all tied into the social determinants of health like
income, housing and employment. Some people, when their house gets flooded, they
can invest in systems like generators, like sump pumps, to prevent that from
happening again, whereas other people can’t do that.
At the individual level, do what you can. That could be having a plan in place
for if something like this happens again: Where are we going to go? Planning is
exerting some sense of control.
At the community level, investing in infrastructure to shield people from
exposure, whether that’s creating housing that’s able to withstand a disaster or
not creating housing in low lying areas, investing in generators, having plans
in place to evacuate whole communities together, building trust between
government entities and community leaders and organizations. As much as we can
shield people from the really traumatic exposures that happen during disasters,
the better it will be for mental health.
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A home is seen destroyed in the aftermath of Hurricane Delta in
Creole, Louisiana, U.S., October 10, 2020. Picture taken with a
drone. Adrees Latif | Reuters
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Readying yourself should also include a sense of trust in one’s community and
one’s government that they’re not going to put their residents at risk. That’s
really tricky, because it’s all really expensive, and if you invest in one thing
it means you can’t invest in other things, but I think it’s really important.
Companies need to be preparing too, especially if they’re going to be providing
essential services during disasters, but also, you know, taking care of your
employees, because we know that one of the stronger predictors of mental health
after disasters are these longer term stressors, like losing one’s job, or
financial stress.
We spoke to people who experienced Hurricane Katrina, and a
lot of them had companies that really, they felt, looked out for them, that gave
them financial assistance, or if there were a national chain, for example,
hooked them up with a job in the community that they were displaced to. And
those things really made a difference.
Psychological resilience is important across the board and that requires
addressing the social determinants of health and exposures. So making sure that
people have their basic needs met — that they have good housing, that they’re
able to find gainful employment, that they have health care, that they have
access to mental health services and that they’re covered, that people are not
working 100 hours a week and not getting by.
All of those things are going to
make for a healthier society, and are really important, so that’s at the policy
level.
At the more community and individual level, we need to be doing things to foster
resilience of children, adolescents, and families. In school, that means
building in a socio-emotional curriculum to foster the psychological capacities
that promote resilience — a sense of agency, goal-orientation, hope, social
social skills and social support, a sense of purpose, emotion regulation.
All
these capacities we know are really important, in addition to all of the
academic skills that are important too. Although I say that acknowledging that
that there’s a lot of pressure put on schools and teachers already.
So we need to find ways to integrate that into that family life, into
communities, organizations, after-school programs and religious congregations,
too, so really working towards a trauma-informed and healthy and resilient
population. That’s going to be really important for us as we deal with these
increasingly complex and intense stressors.
Take time and space to care for yourself, whether that means exercising,
meditating, meditating, spending time in nature. That’s that’s really important
to build resilience.
Ecological grief, solastalgia, climate change anxiety
We have to distinguish between the traumatic stressors that can happen because
of disasters, or other climate-change-related exposures or displacement, and
this free flowing climate-change anxiety — we know this is happening, it’s
scary, it’s sad, and what do we do about that at a bigger scale?
All of these feelings — they’re valid feelings. It’s sad to see a
landscape changing. Natural beauty dissipating is objectively sad.
Sarah Lowe, clinical psychologist and assistant professor in the
department of social and behavioral sciences at Yale School of Public
Health
It’s definitely an existential threat. People talk a lot about not only their
own futures, but making childbearing decisions. Am I going to have kids and
bring them into a world that is burning? I think that’s a valid concern. Whether
that’s going to happen in your lifetime or your child’s lifetime, thinking about
the future of the human race gets a little bit anxiety-provoking. I think that’s
understandable.
Existential anxiety does not fit the standard definition of trauma, because it’s
not a direct life threat or threat to one’s physical integrity or a sexual
violation. Leaders in the trauma field would say, no, that’s not actually
traumatic. It might be stressful and anxiety provoking, but it’s not a traumatic
in that it can trigger PTSD.
That being said, we know from disasters, terrorist attacks and the pandemic that
consumption of media, seeing images of places that are affected by disasters,
especially graphic images, can lead to symptoms that are very much consistent
with post traumatic stress, including nightmares, avoidance, an exaggerated
startle response, disruptions in sleep, etc.
We don’t want people to have their heads in the sand. We do want the reality of
climate change to hit with people. So I would not say, you know, avoid any
information about climate change at all. I often say, get the facts and move on.
You don’t need to read every single article about the same story. If it’s
distressing, know when to engage, but also know when to disengage.
The existential threat of climate change, learning about the impacts of climate
change, can can lead to a lot of really intense emotions, feelings of grief and
sadness, anxiety, fear for one’s future. There is ecological grief, or feeling a
deep sense of sadness and despair at the changing ecosystem.
There is
solastalgia, which is a feeling of nostalgia for your home environment. Someone
defined it as homesickness, when you’re actually at home. So being in your home
environment and seeing the changes that have happened due to climate change and
feeling sad about that. And then climate change anxiety.
Validating people’s emotions is really important. Sometimes older generations
want to say the younger generations are so sensitive and they’re blowing things
out of proportion. Really take the time to listen to younger people about what
their concerns are.
And also just recognize that it is okay, and completely
valid, to be to be sad about losses in ecosystems, to be anxious about the
future of humanity, to have these feelings. So, let people have their feelings,
and try to also empower them to take action to to cope with their feelings.
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A girl plays with sand during a protest of the Cornwall Climate
Youth Alliance in partnership with Fridays for Future and Climate
Live, at Gyllyngvase Beach, in Falmouth, on the sidelines of the G7
summit in Cornwall, Britain, June 11, 2021.
Tom Nicholson | Reuters
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When anxiety turns into a clinical problem
It’s sad to see a landscape changing. Natural beauty dissipating is objectively
sad. It is scary to think there might be a time when the earth is uninhabitable
for human beings. That is scary. Those are extremely valid feelings. It’s
important to distinguish between those valid feelings and clinical disorders.
There is a line that can be crossed where climate change anxiety can turn into
an anxiety disorder.
People need to watch out for signs that they are in extreme distress, and that
their feelings of sadness, grief, anger, anxiety are getting in the way of their
lives and functioning and their ability to engage in their lives and also be
active in combatting climate change.
Look for signs the following: Is your appetite disrupted? Are you not able to
sleep? Are you feeling uncomfortable being around other people? Are you able to
get out of bed?
If you are unable to go to work or to your classes at all, or, if when you’re
there, you’re totally preoccupied by your anxiety and not performing as you
usually would, that’s a sign their anxiety is clinical in nature. If your
friends and family have noticed that you seem sad or anxious or you’re
distracted or irritable, getting into more fights, or you don’t really want to
spend time with people, and you want to self isolate, that would be a sign.
If
you are so distressed that it’s leading to somatic symptoms, such as you’re
unable to get rest, to fall asleep and stay asleep, you’ve lost your appetite.
And certainly if you’re having thoughts of death, dying, self injury — those are
like warning signs.
All these signs of a clinical disorder might indicate you might want to seek
help and process your thoughts and feelings about climate change, and whatever
else in your life is contributing to that. We don’t want people so anxious that
they can’t function.
Anxiety serves a purpose. And it can motivate action. In the limited research
I’ve done on climate change anxiety, the people who are the most active are
anxious, but they’re not necessarily having generalized anxiety disorder or
depressive symptoms. And in fact, in preliminary research we’ve done,
environmental activism can prevent climate change anxiety from manifesting as
clinical depression.
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Young protesters take part in the Fridays For Future rally in
Glasgow, Scotland on November 5, 2021, during climate summit COP26.
Daniel Leal-Olivas | AFP | Getty Images
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When engaging in climate activism, think about helping those who are most
vulnerable.
If you feel like your action is making a difference, that can lead to a sense of
like agency and empowerment. Engaging in a community can also foster a sense of
collective efficacy and social support so you know there are other people who
are share your values and who are working together to make changes.
We’ve done a little bit of open-ended questions with young people and in
interviews. What gets really tricky is when people sometimes rightly recognize
that their collective actions might not make a difference, that this problem is
bigger than them, and relies on people with a lot of power making major changes
that maybe they’re for whatever reason not willing to make.
That can be very
overwhelming and disheartening, but at the same time I do think engaging in
collective action, we’ve seen in other social movements does make a difference.
It’s just ... it can be slow.
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