Unequal effects of climate change and pre-existing inequalities on the mental health of global populations

There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

Summary

Climate change is already having unequal effects on the mental health of individuals and communities and will increasingly compound pre-existing mental health inequalities globally. Psychiatrists have a vital part to play in improving both awareness and scientific understanding of structural mechanisms that perpetuate these inequalities, and in responding to global calls for action to promote climate justice and resilience, which are central foundations for good mental and physical health.

Related collections

Most cited references 36

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: found

The 2019 report of The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: ensuring that the health of a child born today is not defined by a changing climate

Nick Watts, Markus Amann, Nigel W Arnell … (2020)

0 comments Cited 390 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

Syndemics and the biosocial conception of health.

Merrill Singer, Nicola Bulled, Bayla Ostrach … (2017)

The syndemics model of health focuses on the biosocial complex, which consists of interacting, co-present, or sequential diseases and the social and environmental factors that promote and enhance the negative effects of disease interaction. This emergent approach to health conception and clinical practice reconfigures conventional historical understanding of diseases as distinct entities in nature, separate from other diseases and independent of the social contexts in which they are found. Rather, all of these factors tend to interact synergistically in various and consequential ways, having a substantial impact on the health of individuals and whole populations. Specifically, a syndemics approach examines why certain diseases cluster (ie, multiple diseases affecting individuals and groups); the pathways through which they interact biologically in individuals and within populations, and thereby multiply their overall disease burden, and the ways in which social environments, especially conditions of social inequality and injustice, contribute to disease clustering and interaction as well as to vulnerability. In this Series, the contributions of the syndemics approach for understanding both interacting chronic diseases in social context, and the implications of a syndemics orientation to the issue of health rights, are examined.

0 comments Cited 376 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: found

Air Pollution (Particulate Matter) Exposure and Associations with Depression, Anxiety, Bipolar, Psychosis and Suicide Risk: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Isobel Braithwaite, Shuo Zhang, James B. Kirkbride … (2019)

Background: Particulate air pollution’s physical health effects are well known, but associations between particulate matter (PM) exposure and mental illness have not yet been established. However, there is increasing interest in emerging evidence supporting a possible etiological link. Objectives: This systematic review aims to provide a comprehensive overview and synthesis of the epidemiological literature to date by investigating quantitative associations between PM and multiple adverse mental health outcomes (depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, psychosis, or suicide). Methods: We undertook a systematic review and meta-analysis. We searched Medline, PsycINFO, and EMBASE from January 1974 to September 2017 for English-language human observational studies reporting quantitative associations between exposure to PM 6 months ) PM 2.5 exposure and depression ( n = 5 studies), the pooled odds ratio was 1.102 per 10 - μ g / m 3 PM 2.5 increase (95% CI: 1.023, 1.189; I 2 = 0.00 % ). Two of the included studies investigating associations between long-term PM 2.5 exposure and anxiety also reported statistically significant positive associations, and we found a statistically significant association between short-term PM 10 exposure and suicide in meta-analysis at a 0-2 d cumulative exposure lag. Discussion: Our findings support the hypothesis of an association between long-term PM 2.5 exposure and depression, as well as supporting hypotheses of possible associations between long-term PM 2.5 exposure and anxiety and between short-term PM 10 exposure and suicide. The limited literature and methodological challenges in this field, including heterogeneous outcome definitions, exposure assessment, and residual confounding, suggest further high-quality studies are warranted to investigate potentially causal associations between air pollution and poor mental health. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP4595