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Science alone isn’t working: Creative methods can deepen our understanding of the mental health impacts of climate change

Never before has the state of our climate and environment been placed at the forefront of mainstream thinking as it is now.

The effects of climate change, including more erratic and severe floods and droughts, and the knock-on impact of habitat and livelihood loss, are well known. Yet we know little about the impact that our changing climate and biodiversity loss is having on our mental and emotional health. For too long we have understood, and so tried to address, health and wellbeing, and climate change, as separate, unrelated problems.

Researchers and policymakers are now beginning to understand how mental and physical wellbeing, inequality, climate impacts, biodiversity loss, and Covid-19 are linked. “These things all join together – physical and mental health are also strongly linked. So when we see climate change as a health emergency – and the ways we see infectious disease spread, lack of access to healthcare, food and water insecurity – this understandably also impacts our mental health.” said Dr Emma Lawrance, a Mental Health Innovations Fellow at the Institute of Global Health Innovation, at the ‘We need to talk about mental health in a changing climate’ event at COP26, the United Nations climate conference in Glasgow last November.

This more joined-up way of thinking creates possibilities to address these varied challenges together. She added: “It’s important that we look holistically and use systems thinking, and make what are currently hidden costs and connections between these challenges, tangible and clear to decision-makers and communities, as this can enable action that works to prevent negative impacts, while providing opportunities to tackle multiple things together.”

Direct and indirect impacts

Governments and health experts are now paying more attention to the direct and indirect ways that climate change affects how people and societies feel, and how this can affect our physical health. Direct impacts range from increased numbers of people taking their own lives, rising cases of mental health conditions, an increased vulnerability to physical ill health/ death for people with diagnosed pre-existing mental conditions, deteriorating population mental health and mental and emotional distress.

But climate impacts affect people in different ways because of pre-existing inequalities. Climate impacts can also widen existing inequalities in mental and physical health.

Climate impacts and environmental loss can threaten our sense of identity

Our relationship with nature, and our sense of connection with the natural world – or ‘nature connectedness’ – is recognised. Climate impacts can threaten the strong bond we have with our environment and lead to a loss of our culture and sense of identity when traditional ways of life, and with them some of the ties that bind communities together, are threatened or destroyed by a changing climate.

This is already happening around the world. From the loss of sea ice for Inuit peoples in Canada, to shrinking grazing lands for herders who have moved their livestock across regions in the Sahel for centuries. Closer to home, experts predict that rising temperatures will threaten the way of life for dairy and potato farmers in Britain. This loss of a sense of who we are – and where we belong – can be devastating at an individual and collective level.

The impacts of climate change can also indirectly affect our mental and emotional wellbeing. In a study in which children and young people were asked about how they felt about climate change, 73 per cent said they were worried about the current state of the planet. Across 25 countries, negative feelings about climate change were linked to insomnia and poor mental health.

Yet though unpleasant, indirect responses to climate and environmental impacts – such as anxiety and sleep loss – have the potential to spur positive action, if people experiencing them have the right support to do so. The impacts of climate change do not always need to be negative. Opportunities can also be realised if the right policies to support people to adapt and become resilient are in place.

Using the arts and creativity to create sustainable change

When it comes to emotional and mental health, and climate change, business as usual isn’t working. We need to re-think how we understand and attempt to address climate change and its impacts on emotional and mental health. The arts, and creativity, can play a vital role to bridge the chasm between what policymakers, academics, civil society, and communities across the world are doing and what they need to do to address mental and environmental health and wellbeing.

In an online event on ‘Exploring the potential for arts, culture and heritage to tackle gender and diversity in climate resilience and adaptation’ at COP26, Dr Lata Narayanaswamy, Associate Professor in the Politics of Global Development, University of Leeds, UK, said: “Science alone isn’t enough to deal with the climate emergency.”

Clearly this climate crisis includes the overlooked impact climate change has on our mental and emotional wellbeing. Arts-based approaches like writing for wellbeing can not only allow us to deepen our understanding of climate impacts, and their effects on mental and emotional health, they can also open up opportunities to re-imagine and devise more sustainable, inclusive solutions.

Through its versatility, and the agency it provides to people who use it, writing for wellbeing allows people affected by climate change to document their own experiences of its impacts on their lives. It can also be used to engage with communities when planning and funding, key steps that the American Psychological Association has recommended need to happen if we are to address the impacts of climate change on mental health.

In this way, it can provide knowledge that forces us to sharpen and widen our gaze to form a more complete picture – evidence that can then inform policy, funding and practice. This shift in how we think about climate impacts and our responses to them can create possibilities to find new, more inclusive solutions.

Researchers have already realised the potential of using more creative methods when analysing issues and shaping policy. These include using film-making to inform policy to address energy poverty and sustainable housing in India and South Africa, and singing to inform approaches to maternal and neonatal health in Zambia.  Crucially, they place the people affected by these issues at the heart of the research. While not without its challenges – including ethics and barriers to scale – this community-based, participatory way of raising awareness and generating evidence can inform planning and policy for more sustainable outcomes.

Dr Narayanaswamy added: “Technocratic approaches are just not, on their own, able to take account of lived realities.  Here, arts and humanities research, and [the] participatory methodologies can help…”

Policymakers, donors and practitioners are increasingly recognising that innovation in science and technology can support people to adapt, and become resilient, to climate change. Yet, when understanding and tackling the negative effects of climate change on mental health, and realising the opportunities that sustainable solutions could usher in, the need to expand how we define innovation to include creative approaches like writing for wellbeing is long overdue.

 

By Rajeshree Sisodia, Writing for wellbeing facilitator at WellThroughWords

Twitter: @wellthruwords

Image by Joshua Fuller on Unsplash
 

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