— Helen Berry studies climate-related mental health
WHEN HELEN BERRY learns that I’m the same age as one of her children, she apologises for the situation her generation has created.
“I didn’t do it, but I’ve been implicit in it,” she tells me. “I feel terrible about it, I really do. It’s no world to leave you.”
Berry is the inaugural Professor of Climate Change and Mental Health at the University of Sydney, where she explores the complex ways in which climate change, disasters and place influence mental health and wellbeing – and what we can do to adapt and protect ourselves.
Her career started in a very different place. Born in north London, she first went to university in Scotland to study languages. An Australian boyfriend brought her to Canberra at the age of 24, and she’s been here ever since.
A graduate program led her to work in the public service for a decade, where she became fascinated by leadership and management. She enrolled in a few psychology subjects at ANU, ended up completing a second undergraduate degree with honours, then, as large groups began to interest her more than individuals, started a PHD in epidemiology.
Her research began to intersect with climate change during a postdoc at ANU’S National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, where she met Tony Mcmichael — the late epidemiologist who alerted the world to the health effects of climate-induced crises.
“Climate change is not just about disruptions to the local economy or loss of jobs or loss of iconic species,” he once said. “It’s actually about weakening the foundations of the life support systems that we depend on as a human species.”
Berry took this idea and extended it to mental health. She’s one of few pioneers in a field she says is “still very stigmatised” and hugely underfunded.
Research into the effects of climate change on human health has steadily climbed over the past decade, while equivalent research into mental health has plateaued, even though climate-induced disasters are already wreaking havoc on the mental health of many.
Climate change doesn’t cause mental health problems or create new categories of mental disorders, she says, but it is “exacerbating existing problems and creating risk”.
It is increasing the frequency and intensity of weather-related disasters and exposing more people to extreme events and ramifications such as food shortages, power cuts, and damage to public infrastructure, transport, agricultural lands and sacred places.
Those with underlying risks – such as existing health or mental health issues, or those living in poverty – are put under greater strain, leading to a greater prevalence of psychological problems such as anxiety, depression, grief, distress, trauma and even suicide.
This means, of course, that certain groups are disproportionately affected, depending on where they live, their social and political resources, and their wealth.
“We did a study with Queensland Health following the 2010-11 Queensland floods,” Berry says. “What we found was if you lived in a poorer area you were two or three times more likely than people living in wealthy areas to get flooded in the first place, and if you were flooded you were twice as likely to be traumatised as a result of being flooded – so you have a double risk factor.”
The tricky thing is that we need good mental health to effectively deal with and respond to our changing world, yet the effects of climate change may take these mental tools away from us.
So, can we prevent or minimise the psychological impacts of climate change?
There are many potential answers, including giving affected communities adequate warning before a disastrous weather event; providing high-quality training and support to first responders and equipping emergency services to deal with increased capacity; and managing natural disasters as a cycle rather than
isolated events, with communities recognising that there will be more to come and preparing services and using past experience to better plan for the future.
But there is one thing that may help people more than any logistical solutions. “One of the best things that you can do for your mental health – other than try not to be born poor or in the wrong country or anything like that – is to be well socially connected,” Berry says.
She hopes her own work will help in implementing not just solutions but also preventative measures.
As the science is now good enough to make fine-grain predictions about how different regions will be affected by climate change, she envisages a program where communities are armed with the knowledge of their localised risks and given the support and resources to prevent disasters from becoming catastrophic to their environments and their mental health.
She’s applied for funding many times to kickstart such a project, but has so far not been successful, likely due to the combined power of the reluctance to act on climate change and the underfunding and stigmatisation of mental health.
For now, she is instead focused on international collaborations such as working with the Lancet Countdown, which tracks progress on health and climate change, to include indicators of mental health.
“Australia is actually the centre of climate change and mental health work; it’s just that Australia itself is not interested in it,” she says with a somewhat sad laugh.
Though climate change has not affected her own mental health, Berry says is does worry her. “People have absolutely no idea how bad it’s going to be and how serious this threat is.”
But her research, she tells me, is actually a cause for optimism. “If we do grasp the nettle and start looking at adaptation and mitigation seriously, we could end up with … a much more difficult world from the perspective of weather and climate, but a much better world in the social and political sense, one in which we are happier and healthier.”
Australia has a long way to go before achieving these pipe dreams, but Berry tries to live her own life in a sustainable way.
She walks and cycles where possible, and eats a “climate-friendly” diet: not just because a plant-based diet reduces emissions from industrial agriculture, but also because a healthy body will be an important asset to adapt going into the future.
She adds that she’s very aware that an “individual’s capacity to choose is enormously constrained by who and where they are”.
While individual choices do matter, they’re just the tip of the iceberg. The choices made at higher levels of organisation are far more important, Berry says, “partly because those levers are bigger – if you pull those levers you get much more change much faster and much more effectively”.
She gives examples such as the government’s ability to implement an improved public transport system where everyone lives within five minutes of efficient transport, or to install solar panels on social housing.
Though conducting balanced research is her main priority, she says she also sees herself as an activist.
“I definitely see my role in climate change and health research as a political role as well as a scientific role. I’m absolutely partisan ... I believe that the world and humanity and human health in particular are in great danger and we have a moral obligation to do something about that.”
Helen Berry works at the intersection of global warming and mental health. She discusses her work with LAUREN FUGE. “I BELIEVE THAT THE WORLD AND HUMANITY AND HUMAN HEALTH IN PARTICULAR ARE IN GREAT DANGER AND WE HAVE A MORAL OBLIGATION TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THAT.”