Building a locus of control: Protecting yourself from “climate trauma”

With countries declaring drought emergencies and islands facing inundation, it can be difficult to turn away from the big picture when it comes to climate change. If we are to build a climate-resilient society, though, we must look to resilience at its origins, says one group of experts: the individual.

The impact that climate change can have on psychological health is emerging as a concern for some mental health professionals, disaster response officials, educators, and faith leaders. In November 2016, more than 100 people gathered in Washington, DC, for the first-ever conference on strengthening personal resilience to climate change, sponsored by the International Transformational Resilience Coalition. The changing environment is leading to the breakdown of communities in some places and deteriorating mental health in others, said experts. “Climate trauma” can occur when either acute or long-term climate impacts cause loss of life or property. The phenomenon is anticipated by the National Wildlife Foundation to impact tens of millions globally in the coming years.

To combat these effects, some are calling for more attention to “psychosocial resilience,” or the ability of an individual to withstand both the psychological and social aspects of stress.

Losing a sense of place – and future

Climate change can lead to disasters and disasters lead to stress. But a unique component of climate change is the feeling that it is inexorable, that there is no escape.

A study published in the International Journal of Circumpolar Health of the Sami indigenous people of northern Sweden found that young Sami reindeer-herders were three times more likely to attempt suicide than other Swedes. Reporting by STAT tells the story of 29-year-old Gustu Marainen who took his own life after watching his herd suffer under the pressures of extreme weather and unpredictable temperatures and telling his family he did not see a bright future.

In another study, when asked what is required to live a healthy and good life, 93 percent of Inuit women responded that the ice, water, and land they live on is critical. Record low levels of Arctic sea ice and temperatures soaring 20 degrees above average are upending these ecosystems and the very future of the Inuit way of life in every respect.

These effects are not unique to Arctic peoples, who face a more rapidly changing climate than the rest of the world. A broad survey of evidence published in Epidemiologic Reviews details how floods prompt rises in disorders like anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress as they threaten livelihoods around the world.

A study published by researchers from Murdoch University found a similar “sense of place” was a crucial determinant of mental wellbeing for farmers in western Australia. They observed a strong connection between homesteads suffering from chronic drought in the region, where winter rainfall has decreased 20 percent since the 1970s, and heightened risk of anxiety and depression in farmers caused by despair for the future.

The uncertainty and apprehension dominating the political conversation around climate change has also proven to be an extraordinary mental stressor for those working in the field. Psychiatrist Lise Van Susteren told Esquire that many climate scientists and activists are suffering from “pre-traumatic stress disorder,” caused by the mental preparation for the worst. “So many of us are exhibiting all the signs and symptoms of post-traumatic disorder,” she said, “the anger, the panic, the obsessive intrusive thoughts.” Meanwhile Judith Curry, a prominent critic of climate science, recently retired from Georgia Tech citing the “craziness” of the scientific and political debate.

Prioritizing the individual

Building resilience to the psychosocial effects of climate change is not impossible though, said experts at the Conference on Building Human Resilience for Climate Change.

University of California Berkeley Psychologist Rick Hanson said that the way individuals deal with both positive and negative experiences has lasting impacts on neural structure and function. Because our brains have a built-in “negativity bias,” which prompts us to over-focus on and over-react to stressful, harmful experiences, learning to train our brains proactively is especially valuable. By consciously sensitizing the brain to the positive – to see the glass half full more often – we allow for the growth of inner resources, such as intelligence and courage, and the building of personal resilience, Hanson explained. Doing so can even change the brain permanently, re-wiring neural pathways to think differently.

Making sure individuals have the knowledge to be able to prepare for and respond to a disaster is another important factor in building resilience, said Anita Chandra of the RAND Organization. Knowing what is within our power to change and what is not can aid the development of an “internal locus of control,” which strengthens personal resilience. While physical climate impacts are, for the most part, out of the individual’s control, taking control of how those impacts affect us can turn adversity into an opportunity rather than a setback.

These ideas have been codified into a sort of doctrine called the Resilient Growth Model, said Bob Doppelt, director of The Resource Innovation Group. By teaching individuals to use simple methods such as identifying the values they want to live by in the midst of adversity, their workshops encourage “values-based decision-making” and “adversity-based growth” in the face of climate change.

Joining support groups is one way people are dealing with the stresses of climate change. Although no clinical diagnoses of “climate grief” or “climate trauma” exist, Good Grief, a small NGO based in Salt Lake City, is working to boost community involvement and give people confidence that they can prepare for and mitigate climate change through peer support. “You’ve vented and gotten some worries off your chest, and now you have a better understanding of what you can do as an individual,” Laura Schmidt, founder of Good Grief, told Yale Climate Connections. “When things got really depressing for them, they could take a break and let their community care for them for a bit – and then go back out and fight or talk about climate change.”

A two-way street

Mental health issues generally are among the most widely neglected in the world. In Ethiopia, there are only 50 psychiatrists for 86 million people, leaving about 90 percent of the population without adequate treatment.

In the United States, more than half of Americans who claim climate change is personally important to them rarely or never discuss the topic with family or friends, according to a survey by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. The researchers dubbed the phenomenon a “spiral of silence.”

The good news with so little attention being paid to mental health is that improvements should theoretically be easy. For many Americans, simply discussing climate change would likely be a positive change.

Adopting a trauma sensitive community framework can change the way we think, explained Trudy Townsend, former coordinator of Creating Sanctuary in the Dalles, at the conference. In turn, these changes can shift communities from “trauma-organized” to “trauma-informed,” in which individuals have the knowledge to prepare for and respond to disasters and neighbors feel they can rely on one another.

As individuals within a society build inner resilience, it becomes harder for them to be manipulated by fear, anger, and “us” versus “them” mentalities generally, said Hanson. As individuals contribute to societal resilience, it’s likely you will see fewer symptoms of community-level trauma, including damaged social networks, the elevation of destructive social norms, and a low sense of political and social efficacy.

The optimal result, said Doppelt, is that we are not only better prepared, mentally and physically, to deal with climate change, but that climate-related adversities can be transformational catalysts for communities. After 95 percent of homes were destroyed by a tornado in the small town of Greensburg, Kansas, in 2007, for example, people banded together and rebuilt the town to run completely on renewable energy. Such a response is not only a sign of a healthy, resilient community, but of healthy, resilient individuals.