The American Psychological Association is now claiming people are now experiencing full-blown Post Traumatic Stress Disorder over climate change.
According to a lengthy new report, the APA claims that “mental health” should be included in discussions about climate change – apparently, because people are losing their minds due to the effects of global warming.
“[T]he psychological responses to climate change, such as conflict avoidance, fatalism, fear, helplessness, and resignation are growing,” the APA claims. “These responses are keeping us, and our nation, from properly addressing the core causes of and solutions for our changing climate, and from building and supporting psychological resiliency.”
It should be noted that the “report,” released in March, was co-authored with Climate for Health and ecoAmerica, two politically active groups whose bread and butter is the advancement of the green agenda. In fact, ecoAmerica’s website openly states it “builds institutional leadership, public support, and political will for climate solutions in the United States,” while Climate for Health publicly claims that “it is our responsibility to help the public prepare for the health risks posed by our changing climate.”
So basically, this report isn’t at all biased.
The APA claims people are now struggling with mental health issues from dealing with traumatic events caused by climate change, including (but not limited to): destructive hurricanes, droughts, floods, wildfires, tropical storms, rising sea levels, changing crop cycles, heat waves, earthquakes, water pollution, smog, carbon monoxide poisoning, allergies, power outages, cold snaps, blizzards, the spread of disease, food shortages, economic devastation and “forced migration.”
I.e., stuff related to weather.
The APA makes several wildly apocalyptic claims about the supposed link between mental health and climate change. Here are a couple of our favorites:
- Compounded stress from a changing environment, ecomigration, and/or ecoanxiety can affect community mental well-being through the loss of social identity and cohesion, hostility, violence, and interpersonal and intergroup aggression.
- Although the psychological impacts of climate change may not be obvious, they are no less serious because they can lead to disorders, such as depression, antisocial behavior, and suicide.
In other words, storms cause damage, and damage causes anxiety. Also known as the principle of "duh."
And -- I crap you not -- here’s how the APA suggests you mitigate your risk of psychological breakdown or suicide thanks to the weather heating up half-a-degree.
- Build belief in one’s own resilience.
- Foster optimism.
- Cultivate active coping and self-regulation skills.
- Maintain practices that help to provide a sense of meaning.
- Promote connectedness to family, place, culture, and community.
Also, the APA adds we should all “[p]articipate in mindset training to prepare for adversity and adaptation through increased awareness of our emotions.”
Nowhere in the report does the APA mention that the United States has experienced a drastic decrease in hurricane landfall over the past 10 years, sticking with a cycle that occurs regularly as part of the Earth’s natural pattern. And, after a rough 2015, the frequency of wildfires also dropped last year, despite dry, warm temperatures in many areas.
Nor, of course, do they mention that storms, droughts and other natural calamities happened with both frequency and severity long before the Industrial Age. I’m pretty sure Pompeii survivors back in 79 A.D. struggled with a few flashbacks post-volcano.
They just didn’t have government-funding liberal elitists to whine about it.