Impact of climate change on mental health, behavior and human brain
The global crisis and climate change cause the mental disorders increase. How we can improve our mental health by changing the format of society from a consumer to the creative one?
During last 30 years, there has been an unprecedented increase of mental disorders revealed worldwide.
What is interesting that this trend continues to grow in countries with different economic situations, population general well-being, cultural and religious backgrounds. Whilst studying the prevalence of specified mental disorders in different countries, rapidly increasing trend over the past 30 years was found in most research.
The particular concern has been raised around the steady increase (average two-thirds) of chronic distress, anxiety, depression, various types of addictions, self-destructive and aggressive behaviour, and other mental disorders among children, teenagers and young adults over the last decade. The epidemic of mental illness is an inevitable consequence of all the manifestations of the global crisis facing humanity today. Above all, the effects of climate change, exacerbated by economic insecurity to the point of starvation and the impoverishment of billions, the upsurge of wars, violence and brutality in society and the forced migration of populations due to all these factors.
Look at the graphs from the different studies. From the early 90s and 2000s, the prevalence of mental disorders gradually increased, and between 2012 and 2015, there was a dramatic jump. It is starting to grow exponentially.
For example, in the USA, data from a nationwide qualitative study reported a 52% increase in the frequency of major depressive episodes diagnosed the year before in adolescents and a 63% increase in young adults aged 18-25 over almost ten years.
Various forms of suicidal behaviour increased significantly over the past year among adolescents and young adults, and the prevalence of completed suicides increased by an average of 47% among young adults.
The prevalence of severe psychological distress in the same age category increased by 71% from 2008 to 2017.
The prevalence of severe psychological distress in the same age category increased by 71% from 2008 to 2017.
Necessary measures of emotional stability, mental health and behavioural disorders are the rates of suicide (auto-aggression) and homicide (aggression) in society.
According to data provided by the US National Center for Health Statistics, the overall suicide rate in the United States increased by 35.2% from 2000 to 2018. However, in the category of children, adolescents 10 - 14 years old, it tripled from 2000 to 2020, and among youth 15 - 24 years old, it increased by 87%.
Suicide was the second leading cause of death among 10 to 14-year-olds and 25 to 34-year-olds, and homicide in the 15 to 24-year-old category, second only to accidents.
There has been a significant change in the cause of death statistics for children and young people in the US in recent decades, which shows an unprecedented increase in aggression/auto-aggression in our society. We see that accidents and injuries are the leading cause of death in the 1-24 age group, but what are these accidents? For over 60 years, road traffic accidents have prevailed. However, since 2017, firearm-related injuries have become the most common cause of death.
Overall, two-thirds of these deaths were homicides, and 30% were suicides. In 2021, seven children per day were killed by firearms. In the first six months of 2022, more than 300 mass shootings in the US.
Mental health assessments of Canadian youth show an approximately two-fold increase in mood and anxiety disorders and suicidal behaviour.
There has also been an increase in the number of people seeking mental health services.
Canadian experts in Ontario have seen an 89.1% increase in psychiatric emergencies since 2006, particularly among young people from 14 to 21 years old. By 2017, there was a 135% increase in the proportion of young people aged 13 to 17 committing acts of self-harm.
According to a UK NHS report long before the COVID-19 pandemic, rates of mental illness were already rising slowly and steadily. The percentage of adults with mental health problems increased by more than two-thirds between 2000 and 2014. According to the 2014 survey, the prevalence of psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia and affective psychosis has also increased over the past year.
Mental health services in England received a record 4.3 million referrals in 2021 alone, with the number of people accessing mental health services steadily increasing.
In just four years, from 2017 to 2021, the prevalence of mental health problems among children aged 6 to 16 increased from 11.6% to 17.4%. So about 1 in 6 children had at least one mental health problem in 2021, up from 1 in 9 in 2017.
The same pattern of continuous increase in mental health problems is seen in the population of European countries.
In Germany, for example, between 2000 and 2013, an increase in hospital admissions for all categories of mental disorders, except psychotic, per 100,000 population was observed in the age group 0-19 years.
In Belgium, the prevalence of depression increased from 6.73% in 2000 to 9.20% in 2019. Regarding the incidence of depression, there was a decreasing trend from 2000 to 2015, followed by a sharp increase from 2015 to 2019.
A steady increase in mental health disorders has also been observed in Australia over the last decade:
Between 2020 and 2021, the mental health situation for Australians continued to deteriorate. Of the 19.6 million Australians aged 16-85 years: more than two in five had suffered a mental health disorder at some point in their lives. Anxiety was the most common group of mental disorders, followed by depression.
Most disturbing was the fact that there was a shift in mental health disorders to a younger age group. It was in the 16-24 and 25-34-year-old category that all mental disorders, addictions, suicidal and self-harming behaviour were most prevalent. The same trend we see in other countries as well.
According to the Gallup Institute's annual Global Positive/Negative Emotional Experiences and Wellbeing Survey, people worldwide will feel more anxious, stressed and sad in 2021 than at any time in the last 16 years. Negative emotions - a combination of stress, sadness, anger, anxiety and physical pain - reached an all-time high last year. But according to Gallup head John Clifton, the global rise in unhappiness began long before most of the problems hit the headlines. Unhappiness has been on the rise for a decade.
According to the official WHO statistics, every 4th-5th person in the world suffers clinically from some kind of mental disorder and 20% of children and adolescents. About 10-14% of adults suffer from severe mental illnesses, such as clinical depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and neurodegenerative diseases. Every 40 seconds someone in our world dies by suicide.
More than 30-40% of people (in some countries, this figure reaches 50%) suffer from mental disorders in their lifetime. More than 20% in the last 12 months, teenagers and young people suffer from anxiety, stress and depression, lose the meaning of life and interest in whatever, cut up their bodies, commit suicide, become victims of violence or show aggression themselves. And this is only according to official figures. Only 25-30% of people with mental disorders go to official psychiatric services, and only 5-10% of those with addictions. We don't even realise the true extent of the prevalence of mental disorders.
Certainly, the increase in mental disorders is a consequence of all the manifestations of the global crisis, but we see the most significant impact from the climate crisis. We specifically cited studies before the pandemic and from countries with more stable economies whose populations were not involved in military conflict.
The climate crisis is affecting people around the world. Could you look at graphs of the increase in climate disasters and the increase in average annual temperature by year around the world? What we see in these graphs is comparable to the graphs of the growth of mental disorders, aggression, and self-harming behaviour of people.
The impact of natural disasters on mental health has been well researched. Victims of natural disasters face stress, which can develop into depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and various forms of addiction. According to a report by the American Public Health Association, about 54% of adults and 45% of children suffer from depression after a disaster. The prevalence of suicidal behaviour increases twice as much.
However, there are factors less well understood. For example, indirect informational influence on public consciousness and direct impact of physical factors such as temperature rise, changes in the planet's magnetic field and the impact of cosmic and solar radiation.
A study of 10,000 young people between the ages of 16 and 25 from 10 different cultural, economic, and climatic backgrounds was conducted in 2021. Structured interviews and surveys were conducted to find out what emotions they felt about climate change, how it affected their daily lives, and how they thought about the effectiveness of governments in responding to the climate crisis. The results were shocking. Over 50% reported each of the following emotions: sadness, anxiety, anger, powerlessness, helplessness and guilt. However, almost 60% said they felt "very bad" or "extremely" worried about climate change. More than 45% of participants said that their attitude towards climate change had a negative impact on their daily life and functioning, with many (75 to 83%) of survey participants reporting high levels of negative thoughts about climate change.
Destabilization of the planet's core under the influence of aggressive cosmic rays leads to decreasing or reducing the geomagnetic field strength.
Human has their electromagnetic field, which constantly interacts with the external magnetic field of the Earth. Changes in the geomagnetic field affect the entire body, but the nervous system is most sensitive to this effect.
The cardiovascular, hormonal and immune systems are also very sensitive. These are the controlling systems of the whole organism. As it is known, nerve cells communicate with each other by means of electromagnetic impulses and neurochemical signal transmission, so the nervous system is the first to react to changes in the electromagnetic field of the Earth.
