Mental Weather

You may have picked up from previous blogs that I work in the field of environmental sustainability.  I changed jobs back in January and although this new job has its own stresses, I love the area of work I'm involved in and hope I am lucky enough to continue working in this area in the future.  I won't go into exactly what I do but sufficient is it to say that it involves running events and supporting organisations become more sustainable themselves.

Things aren't quite this bad...

A significant part of my job and a big passion of mine is the severe weather side of this, i.e. protecting organisations from being shafted by severe weather.  One of the most fulfilling parts of both of my jobs is/has been working in communities and, more recently, with health professionals in trying to make patients and communities more resilient to the impacts of the weather and to try and alleviate fuel poverty, where possible.  I'm currently, with support, developing a network with health practitioners to try and make severe weather something they think more about on a daily basis.

As such, the research and real-life situations I have seen in developing this is quite striking, in terms of how much of an impact severe weather can have on physical, but also mental health. Physical is more obvious: cold weather and fuel poverty can lead, in the worst, cases to pneumonia for example; heatwaves can cause heatstroke and breathing difficulties; flood water can carry water-borne diseases; you could get struck by lightning or go arse over head on ice.

But the mental health effects are less well understood and, more importantly, less well discussed.  Whether it's less well discussed because of that lack of understanding or because of the stigma that we know still surrounds mental health I'm not sure, but it's certainly the reality.  So how can severe weather affect mental health, exactly?

- One of the direct ways is through Seasonal Affective Disorder.  At a conference I was at yesterday (one of the reasons that spurred me on to write this blog), SAD was mentioned for the first time at any sort of work event I've attended.  But this is a key condition that is affected directly by the weather.  Of course, it's not just about weather; it's also about the darker days.  This must be a horrible condition as it is purely cyclic and you know when it's coming.  I don't have SAD, but if anything I have the opposite!  

- There is also a direct link between physical and mental health.  In snowfall or icy conditions, for example, elderly people in particular are almost homebound.  They can't get out for fear of falling over. A friend of our family fell on some ice whilst walking to a non-gritted bus stop during one of those recent severe winters and were it not for one of our friendly bus drivers coming to the rescue he would have died.  Since then, once he'd fully recovered physically, he has come outside far less for fear of it happening again.  It has restricted his life much more, and when he does venture out he needs someone with him all the time for confidence.  This particular person is very much a positive person too; someone with perhaps even less initial confidence or someone who already had a mental health problem may have really struggled after just this one incident.  Winters now are almost a no-go.

- The knock-on effect of being homebound of course is loneliness.  The gentleman I mention above is still living with his wife, but many people in their 80s are widowers.  Such people rely on going out and about to socialise, and when the weather prevents this with whatever severe conditions it throws up, it can have a debilitating effect on a person's life.  They become lonely and depressed very quickly, which is a sad way to conclude a life.

- Flooding, something we've seen a lot of over the last few years, is something that can have an adverse effect on anyone's mental health.  If someone's home gets flooded it can cause thousands of pounds worth of damage.  It then takes a long time to get back to normal and it also becomes more difficult to sell your home, especially in areas where it floods frequently.  The strain that this can put the residents under can be exceptional and needless to say this can lead to significant mental health problems especially in the longer-term, namely depression and anxiety.  You would always be on edge that it was going to happen again.  This could be especially heightened if you have a family to support.

- Fuel poverty, as mentioned above, isn't directly affected by the weather. Fuel poverty comes about via an accumulation of problems resulting in a lack of money to pay for heating.  But of course, it is exacerbated in cold weather and can cause months of misery - and yes, again, depression and anxiety - for those people worst affected.  In a More Economically Developed Country as were are, no-one should really have to choose between heating and eating, but that is the reality.  And the mental health effects of striving to do this must be telling.

This list isn't exhaustive, and needless to say any physical effects as a result of severe weather impacts can impact negatively on mental health, particularly if it affects you or a carer severely or frequently.  My argument is that, I'm no expert on health at all, and yet even I have identified through my work that there are numerous effects that severe weather can have on mental health, so more should be being done.  Some organisations, such as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, are doing more on this but the problem is only likely to get worse.  With an ageing population and climate change increasing the amount of severe weather events we get, more research needs to go into the effect that weather events have on mental health, and more importantly more efforts needs to go into helping people in these situations.  It will only become worse otherwise.

Tackling this specific issue is only a small percentage of my role; maybe there needs to be more roles that focus on this fulltime?

Best wishes
Al