Climate Change and Mental Health- Past and Future Social Justice Considerations

Abstract

Evidence continues to mount regarding the impact of climate change on the ecosystems of the world with increasingly dire predictions about the need for global action to slow warming and its downstream effects. Human beings are not immune to changes in their environment. Growing research demonstrates the impact of climate change on cardiovascular, pulmonary, psychiatric, neurologic and renal diseases, as well as its disruption of overall health through malnutrition, infectious disease, and pregnancy and developmental complications. Stress is known to precipitate, worsen, and maintain chronic disease. Social and community factors are known to impact individual and community mental health. The psychological stress of loss of goods, identity, and social support through weather events brought about by climate change has the potential to worsen the health and wellbeing of populations. Climate change does not impact communities equally. Populations historically and currently disadvantaged by inequitable policies may live in environments more at-risk to natural disaster, and have access to fewer financial, governmental, social, and healthcare resources to respond to climate events. Limitation of individual and community ability to respond to stressors reduces resilience and perpetuates chronic stress. The aim of this thesis is to examine the intersection of mental health and climate change with a particular focus on how social injustice has shaped the capability of populations, particularly those in urban settings, to respond to environmental changes with Philadelphia as a particular example.