Mental Wellbeing

A19 - Climate Change — What Does it Mean for the Mental Health System?

Monday, April 11, 2022

10:30 AM – 11:30 AM

Location: Gaylord National, National Harbor 6/7

Workshop Presenter(s)

Gary Belkin, PhD, MPH MD

Founder and President
Billion Minds Institute
New York City, New York

Slides

Climate change and environmental collapse will accelerate mass-level mental health damage globally and will deeply damage social capacity to act and cope. The social climate, and emotional and social resilience are also critical to the human future and need attention. Mental health professionals, with their expertise and systems should advocate for and step up to those roles.

Learning Objectives:

Identify the scope and range of mental health effects from environmental change and some of the evidence behind them.
Describe the role of social and civic action to respond to these challenges and their consequences and their relationship to the work and skills and capacity of mental health professionals and systems.
Recognize evidence on "task-sharing"—the science of spreading skills for mental health care, promotion and prevention across the lay public as one tangible approach to mass scale.