Damian Sendler: The mental health of rural and distant communities will continue to deteriorate as the effects of climate change continue to worsen. Thus, academics and practitioners must recognize the importance of multidisciplinary methods to solving this problem.
Damian Sendler
Damian Jacob Sendler: Rural populations make up 29% and 17%, respectively, of the total populations in Australia and Scotland (where the authors of this post reside and work). While the cities of Brisbane and Edinburgh will also be adversely affected by rising sea levels, rural areas in these countries will bear the brunt of the effects of climate change.
Dr. Sendler: Forest fires, coastal inundation and riverine floods are expected to worsen in the Australian regions of the Central Coast in New South Wales, the Sunshine Coast in Queensland and Greater Shepparton in Victoria. Climate change in Scotland is expected to bring greater coastal erosion, substantial inland flooding, and alternating drought conditions for rural farming communities in the countryside. In general, human and non-human societies might expect new and related issues as natural habitats and ecologies are disrupted and temperatures rise and become unbearable to live in5.
Damien Sendler: Climate change’s impact on mental health has received scant attention. However, Helen Berry and her colleagues have been highlighting the need for an overall framework that combines multidisciplinary perspectives and since the mid-2000s. There is a complex web of relationships that necessitate a systems approach to study and intervention – from large-scale epidemiological studies to community-based treatments – in order to understand the link between climate change and mental health.
Damian Jacob Sendler
Damian Jacob Markiewicz Sendler: Research on climate change and mental health should begin with an understanding of how people and their environments interact on a variety of scales—from the individual level to the community level to the globe. The academic discipline of human geography, of which social geography is a component, also falls under this umbrella.
Dr. Sendler: A few years ago, in a commentary in this journal, we re-introduced social geography to rural and distant health academics and practitioners. Rural mental health experts, particularly in Australia, have begun to incorporate social geographic concepts in their work in the last decade, but progress is slow. In light of a global climate change emergency, however, we would like to encourage a re-examination of what social geography has to offer rural mental health.
Damian Sendler: A subdiscipline of human geography, social geography, dates back to the late nineteenth century. Socio-geography ‘focuses on the interaction between society and space, with particular attention on themes of social identity, nature, relevance, and justice. It was a common theme in much of twentieth-century social geography to study the ways in which some groups were better off than others because of their location in relation to others.
Issues of gender and sexuality, class, racism and racialization, migration and refugee relocation, and disability (including mental illness) were of particular interest. Several social geographers have claimed that rural mental health is impeded by the absence of anonymity, rural gossip, and social proximity of rural communities.
Damian Jacob Sendler: There have been many changes and developments in social geography over the years. Identity is one of these. Rather of seeing identity as predefined and unchanging, social geographers today see it as something that constantly changes through time as a result of interactions with the environment.
Humans and non-humans are now part of the term “social” in the context of “more-than-human” geography, which has developed into a subfield of the discipline. There are no human needs to be met by the natural world. Humans have an impact on the world, but the world likewise has an impact on us, in ways that are mutually dependent and mutually constitutive.
Damian Sendler: Our ideas, feelings, and actions all influence and are affected by the world around us because we are ‘of the world’. However, the Anthropocene has made this notion particularly relevant to climate change, as well as its relationship to mental health.
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