Community Engagement and Empowerment:

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planet is dead we will all hold hand how did we everything . welcome everyone keep Milling about and making friends you’ve got a little bit more time we’re just waiting another minute for some more voyagers to come into the room we’re all going to die we do we do before it happens . attention citizens please Evacuate the country all right thank you thank you to Carmen who is handling the tech in the back everyone welcome to the breakout session on climate change and mental health we are so delighted that you have
made time and space for us today in this incredibly busy planetary Health Summit my name is Britt Ray and I will be your moderator today now you might have noticed that there was a song playing in the background for a few minutes as people were gathering trickling in not sure if you read any of the lyrics that were scrolling by on the screen but that’s a song called environmental anxiety by a British artist named Nam Ray and we chose to play this for you just as a tiny example of how many artistic Explorations musicals operas

How To Effects of Climate Change on Rainfall, Surface Water and Temperature in Zimbabwe

installations are now pouring out of our human family around the world to help us process the mental and emotional distresses and disturbances that so many of us have within us as we move through all of this planetary change and so we’ve come together around this session today to explore exactly that Nexus between human mental emotional spiritual well-being and the climate and wider ecological crisis in which we are living so this event today is co-organized by the climate Mental Health Network which is a us-based and
focused group creating resources and programs modeled off of research with youth Educators and parents as well as the initiative that I lead in the school of medicine at Stanford University which is called Circle at Stanford Psychiatry a research and action initiative focused on community-minded interventions for resilience climate leadership and emotional well-being can we please move to the agenda slide great so as you can see here today we’re going to get into a lot of Juicy meaty topics together including doing a
brief overview of the climate Mental Health nexas we’re going to learn about a massively inspiring and ambitious research project to create a global community of practice for climate change and mental health as well as a Global Research and action agenda to help cement the field in solutions that can go into the hands of policymakers and practitioners and funders we’re going to dive into some groundbreaking research and thought leadership from the Philippines about what climate anxiety looks like there for people on the
ground today in a research field that is all too often occupied by by global North voices this is a critical Global South perspective and we’re going to get into some incredibly creative and genre defining ways of visualizing climate Mental Health Data and promoting emotional and cognitive engagement with this field so I hope that you are ready for all of these wonderful elaborations and I’m joined today by a wonderful group of panelists they’re very dynamic in order of appearance we have Dr Lawrence lead of the climate
Care Center at Imperial College London we also have Dr John aruta leader of the sphere Lab at dsal University in the Philippines and we have the incredibly creative dynamic duo Pablo Suarez and Jano menler Darez from the Red Cross red climate Center Pablo is joining us virtually Carmen just a thumbs up hoping that Pablo is looped in linked and ready to this presentation so I will bring on our first speaker in a moment but first let’s Advance the slide to tap into a quick exploration of how we are all feeling in the climate
crisis today so what you see here is a climate emotions wheel created by the climate mental health network based on the research of panu Picola who’s an Eco anxiety researcher who did a taxonomy of climate climate emotions looking at what the literature has to tell us about how diverse peoples are feeling in relation to this crisis and you’ll see that it actually resembles the kind of emotions wheel that many therapists hang in their offices to help clients and patients identify their emotional experiences
which can otherwise be kind of uded or blurry or difficult to disentangle and so here we’d like to ask you to just take a couple minutes please turn to the person next to you if you have no one next to you please Sidle up to someone nearby in a row and use this tool and ask yourself in any given week what emotions feel Salient to you from this wheel which ones do you resonate with when facing the climate and larger planetary Health crisis they might be the distressing emotions like anxiety grief sadness they might be the positive
and affirming emotions like hope and courage and motivation or they might be seemingly contradictory buckets of emotions where all of them are slewed together so please just go ahead and strike up a conversation e e there’s a lot of buzz in the room that’s
a good sign take another minute make sure that you’ve each had a chance to share before we move on nothing gets a room’s attention better than symbols all right thank you would anybody be willing to to reflect back on what you and your partner discussed what were some of the emotions that bubbled up that were shared all of them someone just say that see that tracks for me too that totally resonates and did I hear something over here gratitude coming from gratitude
beautiful any other accompanying emotions yes of Despair how’s this going to go take thank you it it it migrates it vacillates between between those feelings of optimism and positive ity and news are just sort of absorbing what’s happening out there going in the opposite direction so I’d say those emotions are vacillating kind of based on on the day and what what’s out there in the news cycle absolutely yeah thanks for sharing that it really beautifully illustrates how we contain multitudes we can begin
the week feeling awe enchantment Wonder sense of reverence for being here at all and also we are attached to a fire hose of bad news about the climate and wider environmental crisis which can also make us visit pits of Despair crevices of fatalism and scary thoughts and we can hold both we can learn how to toggle and practice contemplative um gratitude we already heard from one of our friends here today to help us maintain a brightness of mind that allows us to also be with the suffering that is in our midst around on
this well those were those were really spot-on um insights that everyone just shared there and I hope that those online are also able to pop into the chat or write on a piece of paper what’s coming up for them so I’d now like to give us together just a brief bird’s eye view of what we’re learning at the intersection of climate change and mental health so as people at this Summit will know better than most there’s ample evidence to show that our health is now literally at the mercy of fossil fuels right the
increased carbon dioxide levels extreme weather events and um everything else that we understand deadly extreme heat is increasing exposure to air quality issues malnutrition for Water Sanitation spread of vector born diseases chronic disease allergens and more and the thing is that as we get physically sicker our moods our mental health tends to suffer as well because who feels so hot emot when they are physically in rough shape right and so that’s very much understandable and what we need to therefore understand is that mental
health is a crosscutting outcome across all of these spanning physical health impacts that we are so worried about and focusing our attention on and when we back up to see the multiple Pathways by which climate change affects mental health we know that there are direct and indirect stressors things like hurricanes and floods and wildfires and the disruptions that these cause to Necessities like food and work and shelter this can lead to clinical anxiety depression post-traumatic stress disorder substance abuse domestic abuse and even
suicidality and extreme heat which is the deadliest of climate link disasters is associated with self harm and violence and aggression we also know that the psychological impacts of disaster are thought to outweigh the physical impacts about 40 to1 which is quite a whopping ratio then there’s that well understood bidirectional relationship between physical and mental health bursing as already mentioned and lastly awareness right because as a surprise to no one through our devices we are connected to a constant barrage
of bad news about the health of our planet and this is stoking mental and emotional distress the research shows us virtually everywhere but we’re not all equally vulnerable of course some who are are hit hardest and first include children and young people who face a very uncertain future and whose developmental immaturity makes them more susceptible to physical climate harms women who also face and experience more climate anxiety and anti-natal distress around climate related births and can experience anxiety and depression when forced to
migrate under the threat of sexual violence due to climate threats we also have people on the front lines of disaster who are predominantly in lower middle-income countries and across the global South and anyone who has a difficult time evacuating quickly which endangers people with mobility issues and the elderly we also see people with pre-existing mental illness are more vulnerable for instance if you have a diagnosis of schizophrenia you are two to three times more likely to die in a heat wve and then anyone who is living
with close and intimate relationships to Landscapes that are changing endangering Farmers outdoor workers ranchers and indigenous peoples worldwide and another group that we don’t often talk about are the Frontline climate and planetary health professionals those of us who are studiously bearing witness to the breakdown of our life support systems and care enough about these problems to devote our life to them because that naturally brings a psychological toll rooted in love that manifests as pain and heartbreak
sometimes so it’s important that we really pay attention with laser focus now to this Rising epidemic that we can see of mental health challenges coming our way and that are also already here because it isn’t just that the state of our climate affects our mental health it’s also that the state of our mental health and well-being is critical to how effectively we can address these problems because if we are so battered socially spiritually emotionally in terms of mental health that we don’t have a high enough fun in
level to take on this transformative work that we know we must at this time in place this auspicious moment in which we are living well then we won’t have our cup full enough of the ingredients that are required to do that work and so yes the me climate crisis impacts mental health but the mental health of all of us determines how bad the climate crisis will get and we’re dealing then with a vicious cycle fortunately this is starting to be grasped and recognized at the highest levels so at the un’s cop 28
most recent conference we see the mention of mental health in the first ever climate Health declaration which is great and authorities like the who are publishing policy reports on the intersection of climate mental health but this is nowhere near enough for what is needed because with continued warming of the planet if things do not drastically change by 2070 19% of the planet is expected to be uninhabitable for one to 3 billion people and yet according to the who only 0.
5% of all climate funding that exists goes towards Health projects and then mental health which is a chronically underfunded area makes up an even smaller subset of this support which is very unnerving given that we need massive Investments to prevent this impaired functioning in society right the additional costs of mental disorders due to climate hazards and air pollution lack of green space is estimated to be 47 billion by 2030 and then that balloons to a predicted 537 billion by 2050 so we have our work cut out for us there’s lots to do and in order to
understand what researchers around the world are now doing to collaborate trans disciplinarily with practitioners with policy makers to help close those critical gaps and get us towards Rapid Solutions I invite up Emma Lawrence to describe to us the connecting climate Minds project thanks so much Brit and uh that was a perfect scene setting can see lots of cameras clicking as everyone’s trying to take in uh all of that wonderful overview so my name’s Dr Emma Lawrence I lead the climate Care Center at Imperial
College London and it’s been my great privilege over the last year to work with other members uh of this panel and many others across the world um on the connecting climate Minds welcome funded Global project so Britt perfectly described this vicious cycle that currently exists between climate change and mental health when we see the Deep interconnections between these two Global challenges and crisis we can also grasp that there is an opportunity at the heart of climate action to better our mental health and
wellbeing and that it is by investing in the resilience of communities and systems um psychologically and socially that we’re going to be as individuals as communities as organizations institutions in the best position to be able to cope with and act on the climate crisis so there is this possibility to flip this vicious cycle to a virtuous one where we get win-win opportunities to create a world that’s better for mental health and well-being as we take action for a safer climate but this relies on a vision of
that world and bringing people along with that Vision as we’ve heard so powerfully over the last couple of days requires that we engage not just with facts but also with feelings with stories um and so as Brian Eno said a vision is needed for the world that it’s worth fighting for and to change Minds we need to change feelings um so when we’re talking about uh the climate crisis and mental health um you know we’re talking about a huge range of disciplines coming together to really understand all the way from our
psychology climate narratives all the way up to how people with severe living with severe um mental illness might be affected by a changing climate um and that requires you know a whole Suite of disciplines to come together to both understand and respond to these issues this field is rapidly growing as uh Dr Ray said but it still remains disconnected unequal and siloed the disciplines that we need to come together to understand and act on the interconnections between climate change and mental health um are still not well
connected um including between uh interventions and work already happening on the ground or insights that we and knowledges that we know exist in for example indigenous peoples and Nations and people already adapting to uh a changing climate around the world um with other organizations and communities that could uh stand to benefit a lot from this wisdom it’s hugely unequal the vast majority of research that’s published in climate and mental health to date has been done in the global North despite the fact that it’s Global South
countries that are being most affected and it’s also siloed we heard this morning that this is a problem across planetary health in general how do we uh create more joined up thinking in policy and practice next slide so we fundamentally need connection we need relational thinking systems thinking in planetary Health including in climate and mental health and this is what was really at the heart of connecting climate Minds so we started out the year uh sort of just over a year ago with two main aims the first was to set the agenda for
this nent but rapidly growing climate and mental health field so that people and investors coming into the space would know where to target their work and this was to develop a research and action agenda that would be inclusive and that would be grounded in lived experience realities and targeted to where evidence could best support change in policy and practice the second and very interconnected aim was to grow global and Regional and lived experience communities of practice so to bring and connect people together in this
transdisciplinary way to create and enact that agenda so we created seven uh Regional communities based on the sustainable development goal regions and we wanted to make these really transdisciplinary and bring together voices across what are very big regions so they uh were created by having a regional community Comm convenor um John was actually one of them BR was also a co-convenor which we had across the regions we had other co-conveners coming together from across different organizations and institutions
we then had a lived experience Advisory Group and youth ambassadors as part of this core team so that their insights and views would be really embedded in the work that was done and then uh this kind of core team brought together voices from across disciplines and sectors including expertise by lived experience from across the region so these are the logos of some of the people that we worked with as those conveners um and as partners including the Red Cross red Cresent climate Center who was part of the the central Global
team um but this doesn’t include all of the many many people that worked on the project but you can just see the some of the reach so across the last year we’ve had 14 virtual Regional dialogues there were two in of the seven regions each three hours long the first was about understanding what are the emerging lived experience needs and how can we therefore Target research to better understand and respond the second was really about how do we do this research how do we change fundamentally the way we conduct research in climate and
mental health so we don’t perpetuate some of the issues that we’ve already heard about over the last couple of days um and ensure that the evidence that already exists or is created translates into policy and practice and actually makes change on the ground we also had three virtual and four in-person dialogues for young people indigenous uh peoples and Nations and small farmers and Fisher people and these were led by and with um those communities so uh for example susty Vibes um in Nigeria and force of nature led the the youth work
some of you might be familiar with them the climate Mental Health Network worked with um an indigenous Advisory Board to work with indigenous peoples and Nations um and also we worked with uh small farmers and Fisher people from around the world and uh partner organizations on the small farmers and Fisher people’s dialogue so we had Al together 870 participants from over 80 countries and we created 10 Regional and lived experience agendas so this was to set what needs to happen in research and in action in each of those seven regions
so it’s really regionally and locally focused and also for those communities that were chosen for you know being particularly vulnerable but also having unique insights and sources of resilience in the context of the climate crisis and we also developed 25 case studies from around the world um to really make sure we could be sharing what’s already being done what’s already working and 35 lived experience stories so really courageous people from around the world who shared their experiences so others could uh really understand
what this looks like for people already living with the climate crisis around the world um if we can play a video this will show just a few a little snippet of some of those voices . . people are tired people are frustrated environmental problems are at the low end of the priority list I could not sleep at night I had anxiety attacks I would say because you’re constantly worried and also even at work I was angry because I’m like there is no words in the capital of India where I mean the last couple of years the summer
temperatures have regularly been Crossing 50° C which is actually unheard of it’s unnatural I think identity indigenous identity is such a big part of our resilience and when you take away the land and the forest that is that source of identity that can lead to a lot of um mental stresses as well we lived in a constant state of Terror that it would spread we were afraid to go outside we had young kids who you are it if not defines you to be a change maker for a better future of yourself and your . community thank you so much so I’m going
going to very uh briefly try and step through just an Insight of how we took some of the the voices that we heard through the project into the research priorities so I’m going to focus on the three um thematic agendas so for youth indigenous peoples and Nations and small farmers and Fisher peoples and so this is just an example of some of the the quotes that we heard um so this one comes from the youth dialogue the victims of this negative climate impact are stressed mentally due to this stress they cannot value their
Futures they are disappointed about the Futures and decided to do suicide so the future is not bright it is black rather than bright and what we heard was that people were speaking about their experiences in lots of different ways across different cultures um and different nations and different groups so we need to understand how um people talk about their mental health in the context of climate change so the research priority that emerged was understanding language and terminology related to mental health and well-being
that resonates with young populations who may experience climate related events this may include descriptions of personal experience um or labels such as Eco anxiety or costalgia which were used by some people and not others an example from the farmers dialogue every season is different the Harvest is going down every year they start cutting trees for charcoal as a coping strategy but it makes it worse a lot of depression hopelessness and a feeling of not knowing what to do a lot of trauma many talk about suicide and
fatigue from farming connected to lack of sleep body changes from depression they isolate from their friends as not coping well they cope using substances so you can see there’s a lot in that one quote about how people are being affected and that was one of the categories we looked at was the impaact risks and vulnerable groups but also um the different Pathways by which people are being affected the pathways and mechanisms that also really interacted and that was another category of research question and so this um
research priority falls under the path uh the impacts but there’s many others that we drew from this in Pathways so how is anxiety and stress for Farmers affected by the on going and compounding experiences of the climate crisis and at what point do these experiences become debilitating and impact personal familial and social functioning such that they constitute a mental health challenge so finally um in this example from the indigenous dialogue when we are allowed to be Maui we are allowed to be well we are now starting to look to our
culture for sustenance rather than the dominant World cultures from a Mali traditional healer and I think that’s really resonated um in the the last couple of days from Nicole’s talk this morning and from hearding the indigenous uh perspectives session just before about the inherent um interconnectivity between the health of people and the health of the planet that’s just deeply embedded in indigenous culture So This research priority falls into um actually how we can make sure that uh there are mental
health benefits to climate action and also that mental health uh interventions are appropriate in the context of the climate crisis and this priority is indigenous leadership in climate action and mental health interventions including cultural continuity as a protective Factor so we had lots across these sessions so I’d urge you to check out um the outputs which I’ll link to in a moment but just some of the other themes that came up were just the compounding nature of Hazards and interacting Pathways of impact we know for a long
time that if people experience extreme events that there is trauma and mental health impacts but now what’s happening with the climate crisis is that there they’re happening faster um and there people aren’t being able to recover often before the next impact hits the power of community came through extremely strongly so the difference often between whether people reported that they could cope or not was about the strength of their social bonds and we it was very clear that in research we need to be working with and being led by
community in terms of interventions we need to be being led by communities but also that um building Community is a huge protective factor for mental health and a huge Catalyst for climate action it’s really important how research is done and not just what research is done we need to send to lived experience and transdisciplinary approaches and all of this requires connection which is what I said was fundamental to the project and so we needed to create platforms and protocols to share data methods and findings and Forge collaborations and so
this is what I’ve done through launching the global online Hub so if we go to the next um slide these are just some stills from the global online Hub where you can find all of the the outputs including the agendas the toolkits uh for people coming into the space the lived experience stories um and all of the case studies so we would love for you to join us please check out the Hub and please um get in touch thank you very much much thank you so much Emma for that overview such a rich project so needed it’s really powerful to hear those lived
experience stories directly from people’s mouths who have been dealing through and trudging with this difficulty this trauma this anxiety and it can be really affecting for us who receive it as well so in honoring that I now just want to invite us to do a brief grounding exercise together because we’re going to move through a lot more material today that’s also difficult and it’s important to recognize that we are human beings with nervous systems and hearts and bodies and we should also Focus attention on that so please sit
with your feet on the floor just plant them very firmly and you’re welcome to close your eyes or give them a soft downward Focus find a position where your upper body is balanced over your hips and your back and shoulders are in a comfortable but alert posture notice and enjoy all the places that your body is being supported by the chair and by the floor take three slow full breaths please at a comfortable Pace breathing in notice your breath filling up your body with oxygen and then emptying it out recognize the gentle pull of gravity
on your body as you breathe . in and breathe out feel yourself present in your body being aware of your head and your neck and your shoulders your upper and lower torso your hips legs and feet now imagine the soles of your feet sending out roots into the ground going down through your socks your shoes and into the floor let these roots stretch down into rich soil connecting stabilizing and grounding you as you breathe in imagining Vitality entering your body through the soles of your feet and as you exhale send down anything that wants
to be released into the center of the earth keep breathing as you continue focusing on this visualization for just a couple more moments remain connected to the feeling of your body and the Earth as you reorient yourself to the room around you and when you’re ready please open your eyes thank you for participating see some people still haven’t opened their eyes that’s perfectly okay all right so we’re g to now move right along to hear about climate anxiety what it looks like on the ground in the Philippines John please take us
away good afternoon everyone I’m John and I’m an environmental psychologist I’m also trained as a counseling psychologist I have a clinic in the Philippines where we provide mental health uh services to Children young adults and uh adolesents with mental health concerns and uh in the University my main area of research is the intersection between climate change and mental health and I look in this intersection from a global South perspective and from a climate Justice uh perspective and in this presentation
uh you’ll see the Philippines in the context of climate change the mental health consequences of the climate crisis um climate action and I’ll touch a little bit on climate Justice and how it looks like in the Philippines and in the global South broadly and we’ll share some of the efforts that we do to build communities of practice in climate change and mental health in the Philippines and Beyond i’ like to to start by uh showing you my country the Philippines it is uh constantly rank as one of the most
vulnerable countries to climate change if you that’s in the world and if you zoom into to Southeast Asia you will see that the rder the country the more vulnerable it is to The Climate crisis and unfortunately the Philippines is the reddest country in Southeast Asia every year we experience at least 20 typhoons five of these typhoons would be super typhoons devastating in people’s lives and livelihood in our culture and on average a typical Filipino in his or her lifetime would face 1,400 typhoons and it’s also an island
country it has more than 7,000 islands and we very much feel the reality of sea level rise and as we speak we experience in the country extreme heat ranging from 43 degrees cus to 47 degrees celsus we expect that to increase in the next coming month and uh that leads to unprecedented school closures in the Philippines in recent weeks despite that um conversations policies on climate change and mental health rarely would Center on the experiences of the most vulnerable like people in the Philippines uh we know
Based on data that this natural disasters climate related events are linked with mental health problems including depression trauma anxiety and many more and I’d like to focus on climate anxiety one of the B words today uh it’s your general worries about climate crisis and the many other different emotions associated with climate change and this is based on the a study published in lcet planetary Health published by Dr uh Caroline Hickman and I believe Brit is here in the study as a co-author and it found that the
Philippines has the most number of young people with moderate to extreme levels of climate anxiety and while I acknowledge that climate change is associated with many different mental health problems and disorders climate anxiety in particular is not a psychological disorder technically it’s not listed in the dsm5 um it is a normal reaction to climate change because climate change is real it’s already devastating people’s lives killing thousands of people in my country devastating our livelihood so it
is only normal to feel climate anxious what worries me is when we don’t feel anything about climate change so while all over the world people are taking to the streets to um engage in climate action demand responsibility accountability as well the governments and the main culprits of climate change some countries like the Philippines it’s not easy to engage in climate activism right uh next slide please the Philippines has is the basically the deadliest country for environment and climate Defenders we
have the most number of people murdered in the name of the environment and this is due to the political and commercial drivers of climate change and this is something that we truly need to address in the country if we really are committed to addressing climate change contribute to you mitigating and adapting climate change and so I’ll touch a little bit on the issue of climate Justice this is a very complex issue the definition of climate Justice can vary depending on where you are in the discussion of climate change and your experience of
climate change but the one rough definition is uh who or which country mainly causes climate change and uh who faces the most severe brand of climate crisis let me touch a little bit the idea of global North and Global South uh it was mentioned earlier that Global North countries highlighted with blue often these are developed countries countries that historically and presently extracted fossil fuel causing uh greenhouse gas emissions and often uh these countries um colonize many uh Global South countries red countries
you’ll see they are Global South countries often these are developing countries have very minimal contribution to greenhouse gas emissions and often they are colonized countries you’ll see data between 1750 to 2020 shows that um historically fossil fuel uh extraction greenhouse gas emission are mainly caused by global North countries of course with the exemption of China and India that are uh emerging Global economies despite the minimal contribution of global South countries like the Philippines we Face the most severe
consequences of climate crisis it’s already one one decade anniversary of typhoon hayan the strongest typhoon ever to heat um uh land killed at least 6,000 people in the Philippines devastated thousands of families and U it cost us billions of dollars you know to recover and until now the surv ders of typon hayan have no proper houses and when we talk about climate Justice it we should also not forget the uh colonization the idea of col of colonizing countries is to extract the resources of colonized countries and let
me show you data in the Philippines that um originally be before 1521 when we were colonized by Spain um 91% of our land was covered with for forest and you’ll see after 333 years of colonization of Spain 48 years of us colonization 3 years of Japan our forest cover declined very quickly substantially leaving us with very little resources to defend ourselves from the succeeding natural disasters and climate Justice can also happen within a country in a country like the Philippines where the gap between the rich and the poor is just so
wide um people from low-income background are forced to reside in communities that are more exposed to elements and climate hazards therefore they’re more exposed to health hazards and even mental health hazards of the climate crisis I’m not the perfect person to talk about gender justice but I believe this should be mentioned that climate Justice is also gender justice that when things go bad females usually would disproportionately faced the consequences you know of Crisis covid-19 already gave us a lesson on
that and it is also an intergenerational Justice because people today and the next Generations who have no contribution to climate change will face the most severe consequences of the climate crisis and in this Landmark case in the Philippines attorney aosa fresh from law school sued the Secretary of Department of environment and natural resources of the Philippines to stop the licenses of the Timber companies exploiting our forest and he s uh the secretary representing his children the children of his friends and the next
Generations of Filipinos and the first question of the judge was can the Next Generation be represented in court and then eventually the answer was yes they can be represented in court eventually attorney aosa one and this case became cited by many countries while so 30 years ago while many countries are talking about environmental problems in the Philippines we’re already talking about intergenerational Justice next slide please and I’d like to share some of our um efforts to build communities in the
Philippines for instance uh recently I established the sustainability psychology and planetary health research lab we call it the sphere lab this is a group of environmentally minded concerned uh undergraduate and graduate students who are working on environmental sustainability through a psychological lens and so if you want to connect with us we’re very happy to engage with you we are also making sure that while we are working on our research and advocacy we want to make sure that we’re working directly with communities this
particular example we work directly with farmers in uh remote uh areas in the Philippines we also work with uh Island dwelling communities in the Philippines who are most exposed to sea level rise to provide climate literacy and mental health literacy training and we we’re building a climate change and mental health communities in the Philippines of course this is uh in partnership with my dear friend and colleague Dr Renzo ginto we build a community of interdisciplinary transdisciplinary multi and cross
sectoral uh Community to imagine the future of climate change and mental health in the Philippines and propose the next actions that we will have to do in the next coming years and decades we’re also part of Emma’s uh connecting climate uh Minds we’re co-leading the eastern and Southeastern Asia where we bring together different experts in the region to also co-create the solutions imagine Solutions in climate change and mental health and identify the research action agenda to address the emerging Nexus of mental
health and the climate crisis and I’d like to thank you for listening to my brief presentation I’m happy to engage with you answer questions thank you for giving me the opportunity to share that was excellent Dr Ruda thank you so much for sharing I learned a lot I am so heartened to hear about the leadership and intergenerational Justice that is coming out of your country feel like we can all take a big page out of that book um next up we have something very fresh very exciting coming to you straight from people who I’m always
grateful for their approach in this space because they bring humor they bring whimsicality they bring energy they bring a creative spirit that defines how Jano and Pablo from the Red Cross red Crescent Center approach difficult topics like in this case what we’re going to hear about today suicide risk data as it relates to climate change so please can we get Pablo up on our Zoom room and Jano who’s here in the flesh go for it so uh Pablo comes in to join us I’ll just explain a little bit that Pablo is
going to show you uh an example of a way of communicating creatively I could say we are aiming to bring data to life and he will show a little video so that you can all see but I have the actual artwork here with me and we’re really privileged that we have the artists also in the room with us today uh uhen Roo and Haman who have been providing um a humor reflection co-creating cartoons with all of you listening in on sessions and doing cartoon Anonymous anyone who’d like to stop in have a chat with them after the
session they’ll try to bring some of your ideas about mental health and climate to life and I’d like to ask mam if maybe you could help me as I will be demonstrating um this I could call it a data artwork um while Pablo talks about it talks about the Genesis do we are we able to bring Pablo into the room I am saying hello can you hear me great excellent thank you Jano thank you breed Emma everyone H so delighted to be with you greetings from Boston again it is about 4:30 4:40 in the morning I have here at home my trusted
advisor and mental health supporter eito who is illustrating How Deeply we can benefit from the grounding activity that that we had earlier from Brit and as mentioned earlier we we have been working from the Red Cross red crescent climate Center as part of the connecting climate Minds to try to help connect what we know from the science on climate and the knowledge and practice of Mental Health with how we communicate and one thing is very clear research shows that showing research doesn’t work we tend to have our comfort zone
which is Publications and graphs and power points but when it comes to these very concerning issues of the merging between climate and mental health we need to explore alternative ways of getting to the feeling part seeing is not believing he feeling is believing and we need to create a new form of resonance so if technology works with me let me see if I can push some buttons here I am going to share with you a a few images of what we’ve been putting together first as background of course we know that it’s
going to be harder and harder to stay alive for many including many who are young today but there is also the premise that everyone all the time wants to stay alive and unfortunately we know that not to be true so an important disclaimer uh although we have done everything we we can to be mindful uh and careful in how we present this information we’re going to be addressing issues of self harm and suicidality so if anyone in the room or via Zoom has had lived experience or has any trigger please be mindful and uh
discretion is advised and of course there are resources for taking this into consideration I was at a at a global event where a speaker who is now a dear colleague and friend Joseline Mesa who works on on suicide prevention she was sharing some amazing strong compelling stories of how serious the problem is and then when it came time to show data this is the slide that came on screen and I could sense both in myself and in the room that the the energy went away we tend to portray data in a ways that is too full too confusing and not
emotionally resonant so I’m going to share with you our popup book a very unusual popup book that helps us connect to what is going on in a sensorially rich way of course I’m talking from half a planet away and there’s too many of you to get close to the book that Jano with hamena are holding near you but this hopefully will give you a sense of the contents and then please feel free to approach Janam and orenia this is in the cover portraying how very often kids especially may be confronting darkness
and you know it is hard to communicate the need for help in the very first page we have what we call artistic evidence that there’s always been suffering many times many people throughout history have felt like screaming but now if you’re connected and if you’re sensitive and you’re informed it really feels like screaming more and more and we have to recognize that in a changing climate this is pretty much inevitable and we need to see it coming now with regards to the reality of people taking their own
lives this is within the popup book a three-dimensional depiction actually a data sculpure from the CDC the most trusted source of data about us and this is 1980 on the left to 2020 on the right and the bars represent how did suicide rank as a cause of death for different age groups on the left ages 0 to 1 then 1 to 4 5 to9 10 to 14 all the way to 65 and more and we see a few things a few patterns that are quite concerning first in 1981 for ages 10 to 14 suicide used to rank sixth which is already pretty bad but in in the latest period until
2020 it ranked second second cause of death kids adolescent taking their own lives even more concerning the reason why I really couldn’t stop entering in full force in trying to to communicate these issues which we’re not paying attention to you may see what appears like a little blip on the bottom this was for ages 5 to9 for ages 5 to9 in the year 20 ,000 suicide made it to the top 10 and unfortunately we know that this is likely under reported because the medical coroner who uh is in charge of writing the death certificate very often
especially if there’s any ambiguity any lack of clarity May report as accidental injury something that was actually an intentional self harm now how does this connect to climate well in a CH in climate we know that it’s going to become even more acute the very insufficient access availability and quality of mental health care and as climate hazards become more prominent they will cast both real and metaphorical Shadows on people in need present and future need and there will be all sorts of from physical to institutional to
stigmatizing issues that need to be confronted now in terms of the specifics we have this let’s call it page to enable conveying many of the things that you already heard from uh earlier presentations as the temperature goes up there’s all sorts of things that can happen at the physical level if there is no food the cellular constitution of a kid’s brain is not going to be different and that may set the stage for already mental health conditions and then there’s a whole sway that research is showing more and more h of how for
example we heard about uh suicide correlating to drought in places as diverse as subsistence farming in India or commercial farming in Australia my colleagues here at Boston University found monotonic mathematical relationship between extreme temperature and gun violence in the US and we heard about schizophrenia pre-existing conditions there’s so much that we already know and there’s so much that we need to learn and especially to learn how to anticipate just like in the recross family when there’s a cyclone
coming we take preparedness measures to help with shelter with water uh with food with safety we may need to have disaster preparedness mental health brigades that help deal with heat waves ER flooding and many other things so this is the time for us in the planetary Health Community to come up with new ideas to come up with new ways to recognize that the planetary scale what happens with our Earth and with our life on Earth will be very dependent on how we shape the access to understanding of an action about mental health and this
book of course ends with in the beginning there was a child with a dark cloud and not knowing how to ask for help well can we help reconfigure can we help reorganize so that help can be conveyed when it’s a need and delivered when it’s an offer uh this popup book was the result of a collaboration among many of us we’re very grateful to all of you and I’m going to now stop sharing and invite uh folks in the room to share any additional thoughts thank you all and I’m going to sign off in a few moments greetings from Boston
and enjoy all that follows at the planetary Health Summit over thank you so much so we wanted to share with you a little bit of the Genesis and our experience with with bringing the Arts forward as a way to communicate science and in particular as a way to bring data stories alive um I’m my colleague uh Haman is going to walk among you so that you can have a more intimate experience of this popup book uh the video helps to be able to share it with a large audience but the intimacy of the experience is also important we find
that when you work with an artist whether it’s a a spoken word artist a musical artist or a print artist um an art a graphic artist it’s actually being able to tangibly perceive the hand of that artist with which invokes a kind of a language you could say that the Arts are a universal language but it invokes a kind of a language in us which actually opens our brains to a more meaningful receptivity to the underlying message so when we presented that graph of the CDC data on suicidality by age I have to say
there was a genuinely courageous attempt to color it and to highlight to bring forward for you to try to communicate with that data but it does not have an emotional impact and we have unfortunately I think I could probably say that 99.9% of us in this room are the product of Educational Systems that systematically teach us to suppress our emotional intelligence Brit was talking about the full expression of the human being um it’s normal to respond to abnormal circumstances emotionally to feel spiritually wounded it is also normal to
cope and to find courage and to join together and motivate together to do something to change Emma was talking about turning the Vicious Cycles into virtuous Cycles to do that we really need to be drawing on all of our human faculties so when we intentionally collaborate with artists even to call them artists is an indicator of the extent to which we have externalized a part of our natural human language so we intentionally work with artists to find creative ways to communicate science we don’t want science to remain
in the domain of scientists we have to democratize science we have to find ways of communicating in particular mental health in ways that helped to remove a lot of the stigma um that prevent us from even opening those conversations it’s often a difficult conversation I think I um I’m not a practitioner but I think I can probably assume that your experience would uh cont contest that um mental health is not the favorite subject of many people we want to make Mental Health part of the celebration of human health and planetary health and
using the Arts to communicate about mental health is a way to help to change the narrative and it’s a way to enable us to really Embrace a fuller kind of an approach to the problems as well as to imbue the solutions with precisely that wholeness of um human intellectual and emotional uh intelligence that we need to bring to bear now I’d like to share with you before I close um one of the things that we learned in producing this popup book uh collaborating with Joselyn Mesa who is at the UCLA heart lab and her focus
is on Youth and suicidality and in particular um in the United States we’re showing you the CDC data for the United States she is looking at the um the differential impacts on youth who are additionally minoritized racially and ethnically now the good news is that her research finds that enabling Children and Youth to work together to be part of solutions essentially to find meaning together enables them to cope and to heal and it’s very important that we find ways to enable young people this the I think the uh the most painful
Revelation in that data is as Pablo highlighted we have the little arrow that lifted to show you the development in a relatively short period of time we’re only talking about over a period of the last few decades that suicidality in children ages 5 to nine has moved into the top 10 causes of death so that is a societal indicator that should make us extremely uncomfortable we have to be cognizant when we look at a page of data on a graph the impact that we should be deriving from that data is difficult to achieve we find that something as simple
and beautiful as a popup book which we chose because it’s something which is enchanting mostly to children I think as adults we are attracted to the popup book because it invokes our childhood invokes a happy you’re perhaps more innocent less or more Carefree less stressful time but the popup book itself is an experience that we share with you and we hope that this use of the Arts will help you to come away with that societal indicator the fact that it’s in the United States does not mean that it is not a similar indicator
across all societies the point being that the stress levels for children are becoming untenable and that should be something that should be a discomfort that we all become more comfortable talking about so that we can confront it and I would really just like to thank my colleagues the true mental health practitioners for inviting us we support you in our work but we are Pablo and I are not mental health practitioners we’re humanitarians and we’re grateful for the courage that you have given us and the
opportunity to connect these narratives and hopefully to give you some new kinds of tools and approaches that all of you can use to make those connections and to make me mental health um truly a joyful uh collaborative work thank you thank you so much Jano and Pablo and our wonderful cartoonists here with us today still showing this amazing popup book throughout the room so my friends how are we feeling that was a lot any single emotion someone wants to call out from the audience what feels resonant right now it’s a bit scary to say isn’t it
restlessness okay good well that’s an invitation to do something interactive then thank you will um we’re going to do one final intergration activity here it’s inspired by Joanna Macy’s the work that reconnects if anyone’s familiar she’s an incredible buddist scholar systems thinker nourisher of activists around the world helping us all learn how to use this pain and heartbreak for what’s happening in the world as inspiration for change making connection and deeper love and so I’m going to ask every to stand up
please because we’ve been sitting a long time listening to some difficult things and we got to just shake it up so usually we’d be Milling around but since we’re limited by these seats and I don’t want anyone to trip on the stairs I’m going to instead ask you to Mill around with your eyes that just means look around you into the eyes of your fellow humans in this room okay you can literally turn around we’re going to connect with each other you can give a a gentle smile a nod and in a moment at the sound of the Bell
you’re going to find your person okay so you are going to make eye contact with a person who will be with you for this moment this exercise please do pair up with someone don’t remain in the comfort of being a loner on the edge okay so find your person does everyone have someone to connect with if you don’t put up your hand anyone not have a friend okay please we have someone who needs a friend here we have a beautiful docking of connection great okay now we will be silent for this I forgot to mention that so please uh hold
back from speaking we’re just going to be present with one another please no speaking not speak apologies I wasn’t clear about that thank you so holding your friends gaze now this person you’re looking at is alive on planet Earth at the same time as you born into the same period of Crisis danger speed and Injustice and this person has chosen to be here today they’ve chosen to put aside other activities other tasks other Pleasures in order to come here to join the rest of us in a time of deep for
boing Strife to look together at what’s happening in our world forests being clearcut corporate exploitation of indigenous lands the huge threat of climate disruption species extinctions incarcerations and punishments against climate activists and so much more sense your partner’s awareness of the terrible Injustice ice inequality and pain that surrounds and wounds us all in different ways this person knows that this is going on and yet they haven’t closed their eyes they haven’t turned away this
person pays attention to all of this experience your respect for their courage silently acknowledge this perhaps with a gesture perhaps with a smile perhaps with a wink now there’s another thing to see in this person’s face allow your awareness to open up to the real possibility that this person will play a pivotal role in the transformation towards a life- sustaining civilization they have the gifts the strengths the motivation allow that possibility to enter your mind and let them know how you feel about it with a smile a wink a
gesture and now you can return to your natural position thank you so much lovely oh thank you thank you everyone thank you for your trust and your openness with each other and with us in that exercise and with that we are ready to open the floor to Q&A yes we have someone who’d like to share something please do here’s the microphone hi uh I’m duria from uh Center for civilizational dialogue in University of Malaya uh the main thing is that um I’m also part of this Foundation A Research Foundation that gives away money to
Grants for graduate student mostly and we give one for lab work one for or something that directly interact with human being and I’m just so happy to have our decision uh being confirmed to be right because way back in 2022 okay we give away one grand to somebody from University Malaysia Sabah with the tit her research title is mental health in climate anxiety analysis response to extreme weather events due to climate change we were after we announced that we got so many questions questioning our decision like why you
could have given it to somebody you know whatever lab work normally we do lab work Neuroscience so Neuroscience you know normally in the lab work you talk about memory you talk about all that and people were like do you like some has even gone up to her and asked her do you know these people is that why you’re getting the ground so I’m glad because but for us the committee at that time we realized how important it is and at that time Malaysia was also start just started having this fluctuating things
and uh we know how important it is as you know flood and everything similar to Philipp and we know how difficult it is especially in the area away from the cities so I’m just happy to hear this and in fact I was sending slides and you know we did it we did it right we did it right when we give away this grant to this lady uh in some oh delightful I’m so glad that this panel validated your decision to fund someone pioneering this field thank you for funding them woo now does anyone out there have a question
perfect oh that mic is not working we have others up here we can send down thank you John want is coming um so actually I have a question as I as a youth um I do see that the cases are very severe that actually mental health is very much deteriorating in my peers as well and especially I’m not sure for Western context but this is just for Eastern context so most of us um we are actually Tau from Young that we need to like like what just mentioned we need to suppress our emotional side and focus on rationality and I do think
that most youth find it very difficult to explain their emotions or even understand what they’re going through as a whole and even in my organization that working which is a you NGO a lot of times it go unnoticed until you actually notice hey this person looks like is behaving off only then when you realize something’s off and most often he or she doesn’t even realize it so how might institutions or even government bodies help youth to actually be able to express themsel and actually discover these issues and prevent these things
from happening in the first place what an important question thank you and I’d like to make sure that others have a chance to respond to this as well I’ll just say that this stigma against our emotional selves of which we are always made up that we cannot deny we cannot truly get away from the emotional and live only in the objective and the rational and so on uh this is longlasting it’s it’s all over the world it’s worse in some places than others but um it is highly damaging in that it leads to suppression
conscious and unconsciously of real and unavoidable emotional impulses that we have from interacting with these complex systems in our our world and we know that that kind of suppression leads to long-term negative mental and physical health impacts it actually is super taxing it takes a lot of energy to constantly try to paper things over or shove it under the surface and so if our stiff upper lip does not maintain and then it eventually breaks and then we feel shameful for having an emotional Outburst then guess what here comes the
the critic that comes to lacerate us and make us feel even worse whereas what we know from psychogenic IC Theory and wisdom Traditions is that if we allow ourselves to get curious about the emotions both comfortable and uncomfortable that move through us and get um so inquisitive about them that we allow them some space to try and get to know them like guests in our house that then they actually cycle through US much faster than if we were to suppress them and that it’s the energy used to try and get away from them that makes them stick
around and haunt us um but we’re afraid that if we let them in they’ll kind of come like a gang of feelings and take over but that’s not what happens paradoxically when we let them be there they move through US much more quickly and then we can follow their guidance about what we care about most and care to do in the world so um I would say that there’s a lot of resource out there we have on can you please actually move to the Q&A uh sorry the last slide there perfect we have some resources here a
variety for opening up normalizing helping to create some shifts in cultural norms to take what is usually disenfranchised grief and distress and make it something that we can validate legitimize share with one another through peer support programs through one-off meetings through even things like climate aware therapy which now exists if you go to unthinkable.
Earth there’s a resource hub for helping to bring in different practices and supports and hopefully messaging that can help other people get away from that that sense of Shame um yes John thank you and I think that’s an excellent question I’d like to answer it as an individual coming from a non-western background also I’m researching uh mental health psychology in general from a non-western perspective and I totally agree that many non-western context would prioritize suppressing emotions it has pros and cons of course and um in
the context of the Philippines we have that as well but what’s unique in the Philippines is while we’re nonwestern we’re also developing country it’s hard to think of climate change when you don’t have food on the table you know um and what works is when we provide platforms and opportunities for young people to come together and express their experience of climate change and mental health then they begin to realize that I’m not alone you know in this experience there are actually U other
young people like me who experience the impacts of climate change who worry about climate change who want to do something you know for for the planet so that’s that might be something that you can explore how can you create communities of young people where you can freely Express those emotions that uh typically are suppressed thank you thank you I know we’re tight on time but it was an excellent um question so I just wanted to jump in to say I think you know you get at the the heart of a lot of What’s um going on in our
societies I think as Brit said it’s widespread but also in the solution to that question potentially there’s also a Synergy between what we need to do to respond as people to and as institutions and societies to The Climate crisis and to um preventing mental health challenges because sitting with uncomfortable emotions being able to talk about them sitting with uncertainty are key facets of building um prevention for good mental health and we are speaking a lot now we governments and parts of the world speaking about
the need to equip uh students with um planetary health education but sustainability education education around climate change um so that every career can be a climate career into the future everyone’s going to have to live with a changing climate but if we do that without embedding um emotional and mental uh well-being skills and building those skills to be able to talk about emotions in the context of Education about the climate crisis you know people are not going to be able to continue to study and work in what can be really
difficult um topics so there is a real need to integrate uh climate and ment mental health education um so yeah I think that’s uh yeah part part of what’s going on here too but yeah thank you very much for the question I could just add um maybe a quick positive from again from the United States contexts the American geophysical Union in its December annual meeting this year actually the organizers from the presidency requested a session on climate grief and the importance of this for the American geophysical Union I mean 25,000
scientists convening it’s one of the most systematically dispassionate groups of people probably on the planet but it was to recognize that so many researchers who may be involved in different dimensions of climate themselves are personally struggling with this as instructors teachers professors they are not at all equipped to recognize or cope with the additional burden of stress that their students are experiencing so it’s really it is it’s an emerging problem on the horizon but it is beginning to be recognized in a
very serious way and if anyone’s interested in that I’m giving a plenary tomorrow on stresses that Frontline climate and planetary health professionals are experiencing and psychosocial supports for it so please come we have time for one more question uh this is not a question this is just wanted to share the data report uh there is I’m Dr Adnan working uh with Agriculture and particularly working with the women farmers in Pakistan so there is one violence against women Crisis Center in the region which is
particularly known as uh the very hot uh region where usually the temperature is above 40 degree during from April till September so they published their report they didn’t mention the reason why is that but uh there are significant uh factors which you can easily examine I just wanted to share they are they have received the phone calls uh the reported cases for uh the domestic violence are 1,67 during the summer season but in the winter they only receive calls and reported cases 365 so from April to September this is
the Prime season for the cotton sewing and more than 67% of the women are involved in agriculture uh working for the labor sewing cultivation and from April till May this is the Prime season for wheat harvesting and uh the mango harvesting season so uh data is also very much important for uh to defend our cases and uh to make such Rehabilitation Center when we talk with the policy makers they always ask there is no such problems you are just Civil Society people you are talking there is no data but on the basis of such reports and
evidence we can push more pressure on the rehability to make such initiatives for the policy makers so there is phone call received from the people when we analyze their record their professions more than 35% people uh are farmers and uh they are the labors so they are actually involved in the direct exposure of extreme heat uh temperature above 40° every day and uh the Long Sun hours uh more than 8 hours every day and relative humidity is above 65% so being a metrologist I can understand the situation at that time in
the field so they don’t know but they are actually uh doing their domestic violence and they think that and maybe they have the aggression and they know the female is the soft target to make themselves so these are the report I’m just present thank you these these data would be great to actually import to the connecting climate Minds Hub if you see that last year URL there it’s highly relevant for regional stories um thank you for sharing now we have two minutes left so anyone with a burning question
and please make sure it is a question and not a comment yes please thank you hi thank you so much for this presentation I’m just curious about um from like your um interviews regarding youth with lived experience I’m wondering how uh if you’ve seen any characteristics that kind of like um inspire people people to kind of like build upon their anger or other emotions to uh do more like action oriented coping as opposed to avoidance coping because I think I personally struggle with like oh I’m so upset about
the situation but I’m so depressed to do anything about it versus people who are like I’m so upset about the situation I’m going to do something to change it so what are the characteristics well interestingly this has been studied and so there is some evidence to show that externalizing emotions like anger when faced around the climate and environmental crisis from a source of understanding Injustice that is such a pillar of this problem that we’re dealing with is more constructive in terms of moving people towards action
and community building that Fosters resilience than let’s say Eco anxiety or Eco depression um would anybody else like to weigh in on this yeah I it yeah as Brit I was gonna say similar to Brit but to your point of how could you maybe shift that um there has been some work by people like Joan Acy and and others of how we can move uh ourselves through an emotional process to a place of of taking action um and what that action can look like and some of the research um from Maria oala and others is showing
that if we can hold uh meaning and also find Hope through taking action that can be really valuable so seeing not kind of waiting to be hopeful to be able to take action but Imagining the future you want to see and being able to join with others so Collective action seems to be more protective so if you can join with others and take steps towards that future you want to see that can almost like generate hope and then that can help you move from that place of um kind of overwhelm um to action I just want to add very quickly
um we need to pay attention to the role of climate education how we integrate climate change into to uh basic education curriculum uh how do we uh teach climate change and Environ General environmental problems in a way that uh mobilizes young people rather than paralyzing them emotionally right how do we help them realize that they’re active agents in this this Democratic space that they can actually demand accountability to governments they can play a very active role you know in ensuring that you know they can demand
that governments and decision makers made the Urgent and right decisions for them that they can actually they have voices you know so that’s one thing that we I think is very important I think the one thing I would add would be going back to the first comment about um gratitude that putting things into a context and um I mean we can call it affirmations but a practice um of reflection meditation spiritual practice um where you allow yourself to be grateful for whatever it is that you are grateful it’s sort of like letting that
spiritual Wellspring um renew within you and it can be helpful as a daily practice thank you everyone thank you for coming thank you for opening your heart thank you for drinking in all the data the narratives the ideas I hope that we remain connected please do take a snapshot of all these centers working at the Nexus of climate mental health If It Moves you to and have a fabulous rest of the summit thank you