Sessions to Look at Climate Change and Its Impact on Mental Health
Abstract
Presentations in these sessions range from providing basic education to helping attendees take action.
A recent poll by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication found that over 73 percent of Americans now believe the reality and urgency of climate change and are increasingly alarmed about its impact on their lives. These concerns are becoming more evident in relation to the mental health impact of climate change. A rapidly growing number of our colleagues throughout the health professions are aware of and concerned about how to respond to present and future health risks.
The Climate Psychiatry Alliance (CPA) has been developing a broad agenda for our profession to address climate change. We use the acronym CA2RE as an organizing concept:
Clinical: Understand, prevent, and treat mental health impacts; participate in transformational resilience and other public health initiatives.
Administrative: Reduce carbon utilization in small practices, clinics, hospitals, and research facilities; disaster preparation and response.
Advocacy: Disabuse denial, disinvest in fossil fuels, develop and disseminate climate and health impact statements and calls to action; advise policy leaders.
Research: Promote projects to address key questions relating to climate and mental health.
Education: Provide professional training; incorporate relevant and timely content into all health trainee curricula.
The CPA has presented several scientific sessions at the APA Annual .Meeting and IPS: The Mental Health Services Conference over the past three years. In response to the concerns cited above, there will be a much greater number of climate-related sessions at this year’s Annual Meeting. These include sessions addressing the health of the planet, the various impacts of climate change on individual patients and clinical guidance for addressing them, the ethical aspects of climate and health impacts, the importance of reducing carbon consumption in clinical practices, the healing effects of contact with nature, and APA’s roles and responsibilities for addressing climate disruption.
More information on the sessions can be found in the program guide distributed on site at the meeting and in the APA Meetings App. ■
The poll, “Climate Change in the American Mind: December 2018” can be accessed here.
