Climate change said to harm the mentally ill and cause more mental illness

Friday, December 11, 2009 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: climate change, mental illness, health news

(NaturalNews) According to some leading mental health experts, the negative health effects associated with climate change will be most experienced by those with mental illnesses. Drs. Lisa Page and Louise Howard from the Institute of Psychiatry (IoP) published an article in Psychological Medicine that examined research on the subject and came to their own conclusion that not only will climate change negatively affect the mentally ill but it will also cause more mental illness.

Study authors claim that climate change will lead to increased natural disasters like major storms, droughts, and hurricanes. As a result, people will become more depressed and experience various disorders and mental problems if they don't have them already.

Since resources are expected to be limited following major catastrophic events, the authors also fear that the mentally ill will not receive the treatments they need because efforts will be diverted towards the many whom will be experiencing trauma due to the catastrophe. Other concerns include that the mentally ill will not cope well with higher temperatures because they are more prone to heat-related death.

For those that are not mentally ill, it is feared that various mental illnesses could develop due to infectious disease outbreaks, mass migration because of flooding, increased urbanization, and even just thinking about the concept of man-made climate change possibly wreaking havoc.

Study authors fear that international leaders will fail to address these issues at the upcoming United Nations conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, where climate change issues are expected to be discussed and solutions presented.

Comments by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger

The mentally ill tend to deal quite poorly with stress, and climate change may indeed be a source of great stress in the decades ahead. When rainfall patterns are altered -- something we're already seeing around the world -- farmers and families suffer not just from associated economic losses, but also from the mental stress that inevitably results.

Unfortunately, Big Pharma will very likely leap upon the mental health impact of climate change to try to push yet more drugs onto people. And if there's one thing we've learned about psychiatric pharmaceuticals, it's that they harm far more people than they help. Many of these drugs can cause extreme violence, and this can have a cascading stress effect on those innocent victims who are impacted by medication-induced violence (school shootings, for example).

In a world facing yet more economic downturn, chemical contamination, prescription drug over-medication and the possibility of future climate change, adding more mind-altering drugs to the mix is a recipe for disaster.

Sources for this story include:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-...