Riptide: Mental Health and Climate Change

Riptide: Emotional Health Impacts of Climate Change

http://www.turningtidescounseling.org

Therapeutic mental health principles and activities founded on principles of “Active Hope” and Trauma-informed Care.

The climate crisis is affecting personal and community mental health in significant ways. We can feel isolated, doomed, guilty, ignored, anxious, and/or grief. Stress, anxiety, and depression are common and understandable responses to this collective and individual trauma. A London 2021 study shows research shows that the psychological fallout, including depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), from events like hurricanes, forest fires, and droughts, affects those whose lives are disrupted at a rate of 40 times greater than those who experience physical trauma from the event. A study published in the journal Nature in 2018 estimated that if climate change continues at its current rate, rising temperatures will lead to roughly 22,000 extra suicides across the U.S. and Mexico alone by 2050.

This 60, 90 or 120 minute group, led by licensed therapist Mike Meyer, explores education, shared experience, therapeutic tools, and activities to process the impact climate change has on mental health. Trauma-informed information and practical clinical strategies will be shared. The warm and welcoming environment will be safe and accepting with snacks provided. Time is provided for personal reflection, connection, expression of emotions, plus the sharing of resources for further follow up. This is a safe place for expressing feelings and for diverse perspectives. Song clips, poems, and stories will be offered to inspire and move to.

Topics and activities include:

• Common mental health symptoms
• Collective and individual trauma from climate change
• Nervous System effects
• Activities for environmental and mental health awareness
• Mental health principles
• Connections for shared impact and solutions
• Mental Health treatment strategies that best fit climate anxiety
• Tools to form and maintain your own climate change support groups
• Personal and community mental health resilience in a changing environment.

Goals include:

– Normalizing individual and collective mental health responses to climate change
– How to connect with our natural world for mental health
– Trauma-informed and compassionate self-care and activism
– Knowing types of mental health best suited for this existential crisis
– Build resiliency
– Ways to seek treatment and community action

Mike Meyer, LCSW, CADC I, QMHP, SJS. meyercounseling@gmail.com 541-222-0632

Workshop is certified as MHACBO Accredited Continuing Education and NAMI Lane County

Presentations so far in 2023: Alluvium public presentation, Public Interest Environmental Law Conference, University of Oregon (International ELAW), APAL (Addictions Professionals at Lane), National Alliance for Mental Illness, Lane County Chapter, Oregon Addictions State Conference (Oregon Recovers), Unity of The Valley Eugene