The limited research on climate change and mental health points to a sense of despair, accompanied by an enthusiasm for reconnecting with the land, according to a psychiatric epidemiologist at the University of Canberra. Grist’s Joanne Silberner found Helen Berry’s 27 papers and book chapters after searching a variety of other sources, but finding nothing on how climate change affects our mental health. “When you think about what climate change does, it basically increases the risk of weather-related disasters of one sort or another,” Berry told Silberner. “What happens from a psychological point of view is people get knocked down. Whenever people are knocked down, they have to get up again and start over. And the more that happens, the more difficult it is to keep getting up.”
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