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Environmental Impacts on Mental Health

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Handbook of Rural, Remote, and very Remote Mental Health

Abstract

While the social, economic, and environmental determinants of mental health have long been recognized, an emerging awareness over recent years has been the particular impacts of climate change and related environmental threats on mental health. Climate change is regarded as the most serious global health threat of the twenty-first century. As well as physical health impacts, climate change also affects people’s mental health and psychosocial well-being via the direct effects of extreme weather events or the flow-on effects of its gradual or indirect impacts on the livability of places, disruptions, and even as an existential threat to civilization as we know it. Rural and regional communities are disproportionately affected by the impacts of climate change, because it both presents additional problems and exacerbates existing vulnerabilities and risks, including increased climatic variability and extreme events such as droughts, floods, heat waves, and bushfires. The multiple health threats posed by climate change mean that an increased demand for services from the health-care system is very likely. For rural and remote communities, climate change may compound the difficulties and inequities that they already face in their health systems. In addition, rural and remote practitioners also experience the challenge of often being one of a small number of practitioners in a community and personally impacted by the environmental threats as well. Rural and remote mental health practitioners need to anticipate the impact that climate change and related environmental threats will have in their communities and in their own lives.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Australian Psychological Society, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    S. E. L. Burke

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  1. S. E. L. Burke
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Global Health Equity Research, University of Global Health Equity, Kigali, Rwanda

    Timothy A. Carey

  2. Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, School of Psychological Sciences, Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia

    Judith Gullifer

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Burke, S.E.L. (2021). Environmental Impacts on Mental Health. In: Carey, T.A., Gullifer, J. (eds) Handbook of Rural, Remote, and very Remote Mental Health. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6631-8_32

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6631-8_32

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