Climate disasters will strain our mental health system. It's time to adapt.

[Zorro]

As the effects of climate change become severe, more people than ever may experience mental health challenges. To provide solutions, experts say the system will need to evolve.

The resonances were eerie as Hurricane Ida, a Category 4 storm, broached Louisiana’s coast on Sunday, 16 years to the day after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the same area.

“It’s very painful to think about another powerful storm like Hurricane Ida making landfall on that anniversary,” Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) said on the eve of Ida’s arrival. As residents of the state braced for a battering of wind and water, many were preparing for another assault — the unbearable emotional toll of living through another such storm.

This kind of re-traumatization may become increasingly common. Experts say that as the planet continues to warm, and climate change’s effects become more apparent and severe across the globe, more people than ever could experience serious challenges to their mental health as a result.

New methods for addressing these challenges are emerging in the United States, though some experts believe a surge in mental health issues related to climate change could overwhelm the system — leading them to consider how to radically remake it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2021/09/04/climate-change-mental-health-hurricane/

This country has been suffering a mental health crisis for the past 40 years, ever since Reagan stopped funding federal mental health programs. That despicable act contributed to our current state of affairs.

[relayerbob]

2. Strain it? It's already broken

[Hugh_Lebowski]

3. Interesting fact, the mental health bill that Reagan is most vilified for repealing in 1981

Was only signed into law 10 months earlier. Nothing had really even happened yet in terms of implementing it and as such, he didn't really change the status quo that had existed for a long time before that.

Now ... the mental health funding cuts he did as CA governor were more egregious and are the ones that led to the State hospitals clearing out and mental patients ending up in the streets in the 1960's.

Although he did realize his mistake and reinstate the funding 2 years later (and then some), the damage, as they say, had already been done.

It can also be reasonably argued that passage of Medicare/Medicaid was actually really bad for mental health treatment, because it specifically excluded paying for patients in mental hospitals.