"People talk about deep sorrow:" Scientists are studying the grief over climate change – Rimbey Review



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His canvases were painted first hand with a brush that was outdoors and glossy with the colors of Canadian wilderness.

But the artist of British Columbia, Dominik Modlinski, will no longer take his colors into the woods.

"I felt that I could not go to painting excursions, because everything is covered with smoke," he said. "I can not go to some of the sites I want to search for because you can not see anything.

"I feel that someone controls my life and I can not do anything about it. It affects my mood."

Researchers in the field of mental health around the world observe what people feel when the world, who has always known, is gradually or suddenly changing because of climate change. Some call it environmental sadness, some say it as solastalgia – a word that is ready for a sense of patriotism when the home is changing around you.

The US Psychological Association has published a long-standing report on solastalgia. So does the British medical journal The Lancet. Australian farmers report rising depression rates as their dried-up countries have been ejected. An International Climate Scientists Group maintains a website entitled Is It How You Feel?

The Committee of the Communists discussed this. Health Canada explores the topic.

"Gains more grip," said researcher Katie Hayes of the University of Toronto.

In Canada, Professor Ashlee Cunsolo Memorial University published in 2013 an article about Inuit in the fragment of Labrador's Rigolet community. People talked about the sadness that they felt were being cut off from the places they visited for generations due to the disappearance of sea ice.

"People talk about deep sorrow," said Cunsolo. "People talked about anxiety, a lot of different words for pain, a lot of trembling in the voice, they must have been tears." People felt displaced in their homes. "

Sometimes it happens slowly, sometimes all at once. Hayes explores the effects of the 2013 flood in High River, Alta., A catastrophic event that is expected to emerge more and more.

"There are still long-lasting effects in the flood," she said. "With worrying rain, it's raining when (people) cross the bridge to go to High River."

Children wander into bed with their mother and father when the clouds open. People who think about a box of Christmas decorations in the basement, are caught when they realize that it has disappeared.

"People would talk about the smell of the horror or the sound of the generator, they get them well, it becomes nervous. It recalls the flood, everything that they lost."

A study by the University of Alberta found similar effects 18 months after a fire in Fort McMurray, Alta., Which destroyed a tenth of the city. A survey of visitors to health facilities has shown a high degree of post-traumatic stress and anxiety disorders and substance abuse.

"We are exploring wider psychosocial influences, things such as weakened social ties or increased addiction, or even increased aggression in relation to domestic violence," said Peter Berry, Canada's health care advisor. "Some of the effects can be carried out immediately or last for months or even years."

Neither disasters are the only way in which weather related to climate change can cause stress.

"Volatility," said Ron Bonnett of the Canadian Agriculture Association. "What we see is much more change than we have in the past."

Farmers can spend months without rain and then flood their fields in the cloud. Bonnett said that more than just a company, homes and tradition that can increase mental capacity.

"There is almost a mental blockade:" What should I do next? How do I decide? "You're just paralyzed. All you can see is that this plant lies where you can not go out."

The words "paralyzed" and "helpless" appear often when solastalgia is considered. The feeling that there is nothing you can do is twice corrosive, said Julia Payson of the Canadian Association for Mental Health in Okanagan B.C., where fires and evacuations were a constant feature of recent years.

"Impatience tells you that you can not fix this and you will not stop feeling bad. It does not make sense to meet the community and see what you can do."

In fact, she said that achieving the best way to cope.

"Reverence brings a sense of isolation and when it can be lost by building a community, there is a big difference.

"We are aware of our feelings, we know that it is important that we have them. We are looking for people who support us, we are looking for measures that we can take to take control of ourselves."

Excellent advice, said Thomas Doherty, who has in Portland, Ore, a practice of mental health that helps people feel an environmental mood.

People can feel like "clutter-hosts" trapped in avalanche information with little action by their leaders. Doherty proposes to find a way to get involved and do something.

She has another recipe: get out.

"It's part of the conflict. It becomes in contact with life, with things bigger than you."

But until things change, get used to solastalgia, said Modlinski.

"As an artist who color the North of Canada, I have witnessed the slow, cautious climate change that is happening. The emotional environmental sadness that I feel will be a widespread anxiety. This will happen.

"I think our health system is not ready for this."

Bob Weber, Canadian Press

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