Climate and Mental Health
As products of nature, we are bound by its laws.
Achieving a good fit between how nature designed us and how we interact with the world in which we live is critical to our survival.
Because humans have steadily and increasingly been breaking the rules that govern Earth’s climate systems, we are in deep trouble. In the news, we often hear of climate tipping points being reached that taken together threaten our very existence.
Every day that action on climate is delayed, the risk to the natural world and humans accelerates.
But there is, undeniably, good news: every day more of us are waking up and taking actions that trigger social tipping points — and can lead to the rapid and widespread social change that helps restore us to safety.
Understand How to Use This Book
Climate and Your Mind is dedicated to all who believe that if we learn about the right things, we can fix or at least repair just about anything. We learn about what is needed and become innovators, we can learn about how others are suffering and become empathic, we can be rightfully awed by the brilliance of nature – – and become its protectors. We can learn, specifically, about the consequences of climate disruption, and restore the promise of a healthy future.
Confronting the climate crisis requires courage. Taking action means challenging the status quo – Including lifestyles many of us have taken for granted. Decisions made today may save us, or terminate in irreversible consequences. That we are here at this hour of history, bearing witness to unbearable injustices, calls to mind the exhortation of the late, great John Lewis: “When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, say something! Do something! Get in trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble!”
This book has been envisioned as a place to find reliable information about climate and to serve as the springboard to taking action.
Access to knowledge should never be a privilege, it is a right. For that reason CYM will never be behind a paywall. Because a wide range of topics will be collected in one place, time that could be spent on learning and taking action will not be spent on long searches for information that could be spent more productively. And a long search won’t end up with material that may be outdated, for as an ebook (in contrast to print), the science can be regularly updated. Additionally the truth is also protected from political intrusion, for in this format it can be neither banned nor burned. The collection will evolve as new ideas emerge, and more chapters about the many topics not yet addressed are offered. In its three sections Climate and Your Mind will highlight: I. Climate Harms; II. Psychological Aspects; III. Remedies and Inspiring Stories.
Want to help? If you are considering a topic to propose for a chapter, believe more needs to be said, or needs to be said a different way, want to make a correction, or want to help in some other way – reach out to us because we need each other.
Editor’s note & Preface
By: Dr. Lise Van Susteren
Dr. Lise Van Susteren is a general and forensic psychiatrist in Washington, DC, and an expert on the physical and psychological impacts of climate change. In 2011 she co-authored “The Psychological Effects of Global Warming on the U.S. – Why the US Mental Health System Is Not Prepared”. Van Susteren is a Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at George Washington University and has been a consultant to the Executive Branch of the US government profiling world leaders.