Pirate's Cove

Yet another hysterical, in all ways, piece on eco-anxiety, taken up a notch

After the wildfire: treating the mental health crisis triggered by climate change

The nightmares kept coming and David Leal knew he was in trouble. A navy veteran with a can-do attitude and a solidly middle-class IT job at a hospital in Santa Rosa, California, he didn’t think of himself as mentally vulnerable. But when the Tubbs fire snatched his house off the face of the earth in the early morning hours of 9 October 2017, it hit him hard.

“Long story short, I went through a lot of PTSD,” Leal says, as we tour his nearly rebuilt home in Santa Rosa’s Coffey Park neighborhood. Wildfires are not uncommon in the mountains outside of this northern California town, but residents can’t remember one like this: the fire jumped six lanes of Highway 101, into the city, and licked up about 1,300 of the suburb’s 2,000 homes as if they had just evaporated. Leal thought, I live in the city; it’s not supposed to burn. (snip)

The climate crisis is manifesting as ever bigger wildfires, hurricanes, floods and heat waves, and cities are just starting to grapple with the mental impact of the emergency. A climate taskforce of the American Psychological Association, citing scores of studies over the last decades, reports that survivors of these human-enhanced disasters are experiencing dramatic increases in depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety disorders, suicide and suicidal thoughts, violent behavior and increased use of drugs and alcohol. A Rand study found that one-third of the adult survivors of California wildfires in 2003 suffered depression and one-quarter suffered PTSD.

See, they take a real issue, one that has happened many times because the area is prone to wildfires, and is made worse by construction by Mankind and a failure to allow for clearing the undergrowth due to restrictive laws, and Blame it on man-caused climate change. Wildfires happen. If you put more fuel where they happen, in the form of buildings and other things that burn, there will be problems. But, really, wildfires, hurricanes, floods, etc, are not bigger now. Nor is there definitive, scientifically supported evidence that this warm period is mostly/solely caused by Mankind.

Yet, the teachings of the Cult of Climastrology are making people nutso. Even giving them PTSD, depression, anxiety disorders, and suicidal thoughts. From “human-enhanced disasters.”

The mental health effects of climate change have been known for quite some time now: a 1991 meta-study found that as many as 40% of those directly affected by climate-enhanced superstorms and fires suffer acute negative mental health effects, some of which become chronic. Puerto Rico, for example, has seen an epidemic of suicide, PTSD and depression after Hurricanes Irma and Maria. After Hurricane Katrina, some people referred to the sense of generalized anxiety and depression common to survivors as “Katrina brain”.

But it’s not just storms that impact mental health. An extensive 2018 Australian study established that extremes of both hot and cold are linked to suicide and mental illness, and the ensuing drought has contributed to a surge in deaths of Australian farmers. Even those not directly impacted by flood or fire can experience a sense of ecological loss termed “eco-anxiety” or “climate grief”.

You know, you almost don’t want to make fun of these people, because natural events and disasters can cause mental health problems. If your home was destroyed by a tornado, you’re certainly going to get really anxious whenever a strong thunderstorm is around and when warnings/watches go up for tornadoes, right? The CoC is mixing these very real anxieties with their cultish beliefs, and making people’s mental health worse, rather than being resilient and helping them get to a good place.

The Cult pretty much tells people that things are hopeless and doom is coming. That these people are victims and should feel horrible. Unless everyone pays a tax, of course.