Empirical evidence of mental health risks posed by climate change

Sound mental health—a critical facet of human wellbeing—has the potential to be undermined by climate change. Few large-scale studies have empirically examined this hypothesis. Here, we show that short-term exposure to more extreme weather, multiyear warming, and tropical cyclone exposure each assoc...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS 2018-10, Vol.115 (43), p.10953-10958
Main Authors: Obradovich, Nick, Migliorini, Robyn, Paulus, Martin P., Rahwan, Iyad
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Climate
Climate Change
Climatic data
Cross-Sectional Studies
Cyclones
Cyclonic Storms
Disasters
Empirical analysis
Environmental changes
Environmental risk
Environmental stress
Exposure
Extreme weather
Health risks
Humans
Hurricanes
Mental disorders
Mental Disorders - etiology
Mental Disorders - psychology
Mental Health
Prevalence
Psychology
Risk
Social Sciences
Tropical cyclones
Weather
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Summary:Sound mental health—a critical facet of human wellbeing—has the potential to be undermined by climate change. Few large-scale studies have empirically examined this hypothesis. Here, we show that short-term exposure to more extreme weather, multiyear warming, and tropical cyclone exposure each associate with worsened mental health. To do so, we couple meteorological and climatic data with reported mental health difficulties drawn from nearly 2 million randomly sampled US residents between 2002 and 2012. We find that shifting from monthly temperatures between 25 °C and 30 °C to >30 °C increases the probability of mental health difficulties by 0.5% points, that 1°C of 5-year warming associates with a 2% point increase in the prevalence of mental health issues, and that exposure to Hurricane Katrina associates with a 4% point increase in this metric. Our analyses provide added quantitative support for the conclusion that environmental stressors produced by climate change pose threats to human mental health.
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.1801528115