Study Links Rising Temperatures to Mental Health Decline

By Mya Trujillo

As global warming continues to take the planet by storm, causing some of the highest temperatures recorded since 1850, experts have been exploring the linkages between climate change and mental health, especially in underprivileged and vulnerable communities. 

Since 2018, World Bank senior health specialist Dr. Wameq Raza, Ph.D., and Georgetown University (GU)  assistant professor Dr. Shabab Wahid, Ph.D., have been collaborating through the Assessing the Risk of Climate Change on Population Mental and Physical Health Outcomes (ACCLIMATE) study. The two have been examining the intersections between increased temperatures and anxiety and depression, productivity and potentially an increased suicide risk. 

“If you look at the entire global pattern of what people have been finding… [in] high-income and low-income settings, when there is heat, people’s mental health seems to deteriorate,” Wahid told The Informer. 

Raza and Wahid based their research in their home country Bangladesh, which was ranked as the seventh extreme disaster risk-prone country in the world by the 2021 Global Climate Risk Index. They presented their most recent findings, which inspected how hotter days affect mental and physical health and productivity loss, at Georgetown’s Riggs Library on April 14.

“Clearly, our global climate is changing, and sadly, vulnerable communities are disproportionately impacted,” Christopher King, dean of the GU School of Health, said to attendees. “Longitudinal studies are needed to explore how these changes impact health and well-being. That is why this work is so important.”

Extreme Heat, Extreme Consequences 

Prone to experiencing heat waves, floods, droughts and cyclones, Bangladesh’s vulnerability to climate change is attributed to its low elevation landscape and the presence of 700 rivers in the country. 

According to the Bangladesh Meteorological Department, winds from the Bay of Bengal transport moisture over the South Asian country, resulting in the probability of higher temperatures, as a region’s thermal capacity rises with increased air moisture. 

With data collected in 2019 and 2020, Wahid and Raza found that every increase by one degree Celsius in temperature is statistically and significantly associated with 30.5% higher odds of depression and 20% higher odds of anxiety. 

“We now know that when temperature goes up, there is a significant correlation with adverse mental health outcomes,” Wahid said to the audience. “What happens to the human being when exposed to high heat that could be leading to [these] declines in mental health?” 

ACCLIMATE found that when a person experiences extreme heat– determined by days reaching 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) and above– they are 30% more likely to experience heat exhaustion, 56% more likely to have diarrhea and 14% more likely to have a persistent cough. 

In surveys garnering responses from 16,054 individuals from 3,746 households, the duo’s latest research explored how extreme heat may affect a person’s ability to regulate emotions, considering impacts on sleep quality and job productivity, which could possibly contribute to a higher risk of suicide in warmer months. 

“The link between extreme heat exposure and suicide is still theoretical to a large extent, and theory suggests that potentially, emotional disregulation and poor sleep quality may be channels through which this risk is driven,” Raza said when presenting to the audience. 

By running statistical models, ACCLIMATE found that heat exposure potentially has a 68% direct effect on the risk of suicide, with emotional disregulation contributing to 2.5% of the total effects. Raza and Wahid also assessed that poor sleep quality, indirectly affected by higher temperatures, makes up approximately 29% of the link between higher temperatures and suicide risks. 

As heat contributes to such a deterioration in mental and physical health, concerns regarding job productivity are raised, which led the two health professionals to explore the economic impact of extreme heat in Bangladesh. They established that in one month, increased temperatures cause a loss of about 0.3 productivity days, physical illness leads to a loss of 2.73 productivity days and that 1.74 productivity days are more likely to be lost due to mental illness. 

The study then explored how this decrease in efficiency could negatively affect the economy. It found that presenteeism and absenteeism in the workplace lead to an economic burden that can cause an annual loss of 0.29% to 0.39% of the country’s total gross domestic product. 

“In low or middle-income countries, mental health is a secondary issue,” Raza told The Informer. “So for policymakers, if we can show that they’re actually losing money because of this, [it] starts to turn heads– especially now, given the global financial crunch.” 

A Global Crisis with Local Consequences

Nia Jones, a climate-concerned native Washingtonian, attended the health professionals’ presentation. She believes their research methods and discoveries can be applied to other regions, continuing to explore how minority communities are disproportionately affected. 

“The thing that kept coming up for me is implications that this would have in the U.S. South, where there is an overwhelming population of Black and brown folks that are also experiencing similar stressors,” Jones told The Informer. “I think we can really… copy and paste their research as a reference point and replicate those studies using similar [methods].” 

According to the Environmental Defense Fund, more than half of the Black population in the U.S. lives in southern states, where communities are more at risk of hurricane-related damage and extreme heat exposure. 

King, who is also a D.C. native, holds the same sentiment as Jones, believing that while Wahid and Raza’s study focused on Bangladesh, the implications of climate change on mental health can be applied to other communities. He hopes the researchers’ work will raise awareness of the widespread efforts of environmental consciousness and justice. 

“We need to take what we’re learning from Bangladesh and determine how we can safeguard ourselves here in D.C.,” King told The Informer. “Every person plays a role in how we live our lives to do better by this climate.”

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