DOES THE ISSUE OF CLIMATE CHANGE NEGATIVELY IMPACT MENTAL HEALTH?

Climate change is a major issue concerning many countries around the world. It gave birth to numerous fluctuations in the weather that resulted in the increase in frequency of natural disaster. Human activities such as burning fossil fuels, mass deforestation has increased the amount of CO2 emission in the atmosphere which fuels the climate change. For the past few years, scientist had noticed that climate change also has direct and indirect impact on people's mental health. It has increased the percentage of people having psychological disorders like stress, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and suicidal ideation. Mental health issues vary from people to people and climate to climate. Climate change-related natural disaster has destroyed infrastructure and personal properties, negatively affected economy and forced people to migrate, these incidents have initiated anxiety-mood disorders in people. Air pollution which is often accompanied by climate change have created various disorders in children. Droughts in many countries have forced people to migrate to other countries and WHO thinks large amount of people will be migrating till 2050. This can create huge economic crisis in other countries as most of the refugees have taken shelter in developing countries. The scientists say that the issue of mental health due to climate change has been recognized quite recently and strict policies should be made regarding it. But still many of the countries have not considered it as a threat and have not created any policies regarding it. This research was conducted to see how deeply does climate change affect people's mental health.