Journal of Psychiatry

Mental health and brain health sequelae of climate change extremes: Approaches towards climate resilience

Annual World Congress on Psychiatry

July 19, 2021 | Webinar

Jyoti Mishra

University of California San Diego School of Medicine, CA 92037, USA

Scientific Tracks Abstracts: JOP

Abstract:

Weather-related disasters, such as wildfires are being exacerbated by a rise in global temperatures, yet their impacts on mental health and brain health are under-studied. We recently studied 725 California residents with different degrees of disaster exposure to California’s deadliest wildfire, the Camp Fire, and measured mental health symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression and anxiety. Data were collected at a chronic time-point, six months post-wildfire. We used multiple regression analyses to predict the mental health outcomes based on self-reported fire exposure. Additionally, we included vulnerability and resilience factors in hierarchical regression analyses. Our primary finding is that direct exposure to large scale fires significantly increased the risk for mental health disorders, particularly for PTSD and depression. Additionally, the inclusion of vulnerability and resilience factors in the hierarchical regression analyses led to the significantly improved prediction of all mental health outcomes. Childhood trauma and sleep disturbances exacerbated mental health symptoms. Notably, self-reported resilience had a positive effect on mental health, and mindfulness was associated with significantly lower depression and anxiety symptoms. A subsample of participants, who underwent cognitive brain mapping, showed distinct differences in brain functions underlying cognitive control related to disaster exposure. These results show how unchecked climate change projected for the latter half of this century may severely impact the mental wellbeing of the global population, and how mindfulness may be important for fostering resiliency.

Biography :

Dr. Jyoti Mishra has expertise in the computational, cognitive and translational neurosciences. She is the founder of the Neural Engineering & Translation Labs at UC San Diego School of Medicine (https://neatlabs.ucsd.edu). NEATLabs innovates neuro-technologies for scalable brain health mapping, monitoring and precision therapeutics. At the intersection of neuroscience and digital tech, NEATLabs R&D is informing personalized mental healthcare, education as well as climate change adaptation. Dr. Mishra has published more than 50 papers in reputed peer-reviewed journals, has 8 patents/copyrights and several awards to her name.