A poll commissioned by the Climate Council has shown that four in five Australians have experienced some form of natural disaster at least once since 2019.
Conducted by YouGov and sponsored by Beyond Blue, the nationally representative poll of 2,032 Australians also found that 51% of respondents were either very worried or fairly worried about climate change and extreme weather events in Australia and more than half of affected individuals also reported negative impacts on their mental health.
Associate Prof Grant Blashki, Beyond Blue’s lead clinical adviser, said that the research reiterated that the climate crisis was not just about physical threats – it is very much about the mental health impacts and also the emotional well-being of communities.
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“We need to talk not just about damaged land and buildings and infrastructure, but the broken spirits of many communities and how we can best support those communities,” he said during a press briefing.
People in rural or regional areas were more than 1.5 times as likely to have experienced flooding than people in urban areas (61% compared to 38%) and were also more likely to report inadequate or unavailable mental health services following a natural disaster (41% compared to 33%).
In addition to YouGov polling, the Climate Council carried out a follow-up survey asking people who had lived through a natural disaster about their experiences and found out symptoms of anxiety, depression and PTSD were common, and more than a third of respondents reported inadequate mental health support.
“We often are talking about mitigation – so reducing carbon emissions and so forth, but there’s a really important and invisible mental health crisis that’s going on as communities continue to be displaced,” Dr Joelle Gergis, a climate scientist at the Australian National University was quoted to have said, adding that a greater focus on adapting to the impacts of the climate crisis was needed in Australia as recent events were previews of what is to come.
Story was adapted from the Guardian.
