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Video Description

Type: KIHASA Policy Featurette

Topic: Proving Whether the Climate Crisis Has an Impact on Mental Health

Guest Speaker: Chae Su-Mi, Head, Center for Research on Future Disease Response

Transcript

Question: I'm curious how to prove whether there is a link between the climate crisis and mental health.

Answer: This is actually a very important question, as proving this link is crucial for developing health adaptation policies in response to climate change. However, assessing an individual’s level of exposure to climate change is not easy. For example, we cannot experiment by exposing people to extreme heat.

Therefore, research focuses on groups rather than individuals. For example, we could study residents of a particular area and observe how changes in temperature affect their use of healthcare services and whether their symptoms get worse. This type of research is known as ecological research. Although such studies have established the link between climate change and mental health, it remains a challenge to determine whether an individual’s symptoms are due to climate change or to other factors.