It May Not Be Long Before We ’ re All Suffering from Climate Trauma

Nobody who lived through the 2018 California wildfire known as the Camp Fire is ever likely to forget it. The blaze, set off by a faulty power line in Butte County, in the northern part of the state, raged for 17 days, from Nov. 8 to Nov. 25, incinerating 240 sq. mi. of land, destroying more than 18,000 homes, and claiming 85 lives. By any measure, the Camp Fire was a traumatic event for those who experienced it. Now, a new paper published in PLOS Climate, has determined exactly how traumatic it was for the survivors, offering fresh insight into the long-term psychological cost of extreme climate events. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The study, led by a team of researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), is based on surveys of 75 adults conducted in 2019 and 2020—six to 12 months after the Camp Fire occurred. Forty-eight of the subjects lived in the northern California region in or around Butte; another 27, chosen as a control group, live in the San Diego area. Of the 48 from Butte County, 27 were directly exposed to the fire—with their land or home damaged or destroyed by the flames; the other 21 were indirectly exposed—reporting that they knew of a friend or family member who suffered home or property loss. The 27 members of the control group were entirely unexposed. The researchers found that exposure—even indirect exposure—to a climate trauma had a long term impact on mental health, in the form of both depres...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized climate change embargoed study Environmental Health healthscienceclimate Source Type: news