Climate change is an unequivocal scientific fact, but its political status is far from settled. Belief on the issue falls along partisan lines. With the right far more steadfast in denialism than the left. The political and social ramifications for the polarisation on the topic are vivid, and well documented. Political fissures are among the greatest barriers to enacting true, meaningful change that can address the issue.
But the partisan nature of climate change affects more than just our policy capacities. It also significantly impacts the manner in which medical professionals in the field of psychiatry can address the issue. Caught between a hippocratic oath and the psychological dispositions and beliefs of their patients, psychiatrists find themselves in a precarious, ethically grey area. In the future, as the climate crisis deepens, the field of psychiatry will take a more firm stance on climate change.
Climate change is an extraordinarily politicised issue. In polling released by the Pew Research Center titled The Politics of Climate Change in the United States in 2019, 15% of conservative republicans were found to believe that humans are responsible for warming the planet and 79% of liberal democrats. The political fissures that exist around the topic are conspicuous, and known. Such partisanship creates an issue for the field of psychiatry since the American Psychiatric Association (APA) must remain apolitical.
Mental health transcends political affiliation. Psychiatrists must tend to anyone suffering mental afflictions, irrespective of their political orientation and beliefs. To take a position on the issue risks isolating people from the field based on political belief. But because of the nature of climate catastrophe, and the mental repercussions, a problematic paradox emerges.
The APA and psychiatrists the world over are also sworn to the Hippocratic oath. They must do what is within the best interest of the patient. Mitigating the impacts of climate change will also mitigate the mental health repercussions, so advocacy on behalf of patients requires the APA to take a political stance on the issue.
Some groups have emerged within psychiatry that push a more direct narrative in relation to climate change, such as the Climate Psychiatry Alliance (CPA), a grassroots organisation thats’ mission is to inform the public and address the profound impacts on mental health and wellbeing caused by climate change.
The CPA’s stance on climate change is one that far exceeds the tiptoeing of mainstream psychiatry. But with recent changes in leadership and the worsening of the threat, the APA has begun to take a more distinctive and vocal stance on the issue.
President of the APA Altha Stewart, in a 2018 statement, said she “proposed that we work toward a strategy of forming effective alliances instead of standalone efforts to address the full breadth of this issue and to focus on creating a mechanism for long-term sustainability of our joint efforts beyond ‘disaster psychiatry.’”
Caught in an ethical dilemma between care for the patient and the patients’ beliefs, the APA has had to walk the fine line between climate change activism and advocacy for patients.
Emergent psychological phenomena that more closely link climate change to mental health will also help bridge the gap between advocacy and activism. Concepts such as solastalgia, which is gaining popularity in psychiatric fields, ties the effects of climate change directly to mental health. Solastalgia, a concept conceived in 2005, identifies a specific kind of melancholia, or depression, that occurs as a result of environmental degradation. As opposed to mental health being a secondary effect of other cataclysms such as forced migration, these kinds of concepts directly link changing environments with our mental wellbeing.
Emergent psychiatric concepts, such as solastalgia, as well as a worsening climate condition, will necessitate that the APA takes a more hardline stance on the issue of climate change. As climate change leads to mental health problems, the field of psychiatry will have to risk becoming a partisan organization — taking the side of science for the sake of their patients.
Written by Alexi Barnstone
Alexi is a current Honours student at the University of Sydney studying political philosophy. Having graduated majoring in psychology and philosophy, his fascination with climate change centres around how the human condition and government will be altered in the years to come.
