About CIRCLE
CIRCLE at Stanford Psychiatry is a research and action initiative devoted to the advancement of Community-minded Interventions for Resilience, Climate Leadership, and Emotional well-being. We exist to address the mental health impacts of climate change in inclusive ways that support groups and communities, with a specialization in climate distress and the co-design and evaluation of interventions with impacted communities. We envision a world in which community members, clinicians, and other mental health professionals understand and feel capable of helping to solve the growing mental health crisis within the climate crisis.
Mission
In keeping with the 5-fold mission of the Department of Psychiatry, our mission is to:
1) Advance Science: We research the mental health impacts of climate change and co-design / evaluate climate distress interventions, with a focus on disproportionately impacted populations such as youth and BIPOC communities in hazard exposed areas.
2) Innovate Clinical Services: We identify and make accessible to clinicians climate-mental health research and interventions to inform their practice.
3) Foster Educational Excellence: We educate clinicians, trainees/students, and peer-support workers on the mental health impacts of climate change, and the roles they can play in community-minded interventions for climate-related psychological resilience.
4) Engage with and Commit to Communities: We activate communities of clinicians, researchers, and students/trainees on climate change and mental health. We prioritize and value our commitments to community partners with whom we co-design and facilitate research and interventions, respecting and honoring their lived experience as critical expertise. We engage with the media to help shift cultural narratives around what climate resilience means as it pertains to mental health, and visa versa.
5) Cultivate Professionalism & Leadership: We contribute to the creation of a global community of research and practice for the emerging field of climate mental health, and advise policymakers on the costs of inaction as well as opportunities for win-win solutions across a cascade of priority areas when programs that address the mental health impacts of climate change are resourced.
A Planet-Sized Problem
Climate change has emerged as the biggest public health threat facing humanity today1. Climate change impacts physical health via the spread of vector and waterborne diseases, air pollution, malnutrition, and deadly extreme heat1. It also creates new and exacerbates existing mental health challenges due to impacts including trauma from extreme weather events; psychological distress from extreme temperatures; indirect stressors such as migration and disrupted access to food, school, and work; grief in response to environmental losses; anxiety and distress about the worsening climate emergency, and via the bidirectional relationship between worsening physical and mental health2. With the continuing warming of the planet, it is predicted that by 2070, 19% of the planet will be uninhabitable for 1 to 3 billion people, endangering human health en masse3. Yet, according to the WHO, only 0.5% of climate funding goes towards health projects4. Mental health, a chronically underfunded area, makes up an even smaller subset of this support. The gross neglect of concentration on solutions-focused research tackling the mental health impacts of climate change will have negative side effects across all aspects of society if not quickly remedied. We advise policymakers on issues pertaining to this glaring gap, and collaborate with impacted populations so that the mental health of their people is protected in times of disaster and promoted in an ongoing way. That is, despite external circumstances that may exacerbate stressors, including negative climate news or inadequate political action on climate, both of which can exacerbate climate anxiety. We are particularly focused on conducting research that supports youth with climate distress, and collaborating with community members from historically marginalized populations who are on the frontlines of climate change.
References
1. L. Atwoli, et al., Call for emergency action to limit global temperature increases, restore biodiversity, and protect health. The Lancet 398, 939–941 (2021).
2. F. Charlson, et al., Climate Change and Mental Health: A Scoping Review. Int J Environ Res Public Health 18, 4486 (2021).
3. C. Xu, T. A. Kohler, T. M. Lenton, J.-C. Svenning, M. Scheffer, Future of the human climate niche. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117, 11350–11355 (2020).
4. WHO. Health benefits far outweigh the costs of meeting climate change goals (October 30, 2023). https://www.who.int/news/item/05-12-2018-health-benefits-far-outweigh-the-costs-of-meeting-climate-change-goals