Hot weather can destabilize mood, exacerbate mental health disorders and complicate drug treatment. Climate change itself is a stressor, scientists say.If you find that the blistering, unrelenting heat is making you anxious and irritable, even depressed, it’s not all in your head. Soaring temperatures can damage not just the body but also the mind.
As heat waves become more intense, more frequent and longer, it has become increasingly important to address the impact on mental health, scientists say.
“It’s really only been over the past five years that there’s been a real recognition of the impact,” said Dr. Joshua ortzel, chair of the American Psychiatric Association’s committee on climate change and mental health, which was set up just two years ago.
“Our understanding of the basic biology of why this association exists is still in its infancy,” he added.High temperatures are strongly associated with an increase in suicides, researchers have found. Heat has been linked to a rise in violent crime and aggression, emergency room visits and hospitalizations for mental disorders, and deaths — especially among people with schizophrenia, dementia, psychosis and substance use.
For every 1 degree Celsius (or 1.8
Researchers have reported a 0.7 percent increase in suicides linked to rising temperatures, and about a 4 percent to 6 percent increase in interpersonal violence, including homicides.
Heat not only fuels feelings like irritability and anger, but also seems to exacerbate mental illnesses, such as anxiety, schizophrenia and depression. Older adults, adolescents and people with pre-existing mental illnesses are particularly vulnerable, as are people who do not have housing or are of lower socioeconomic status.
A landmark study last year analyzed data on more than two million people with private insurance and found that emergency department visits for mental illnesses were significantly higher during the five or six hottest days of summer, compared with the coolest days of the same season.The increase was greater in northern parts of the United States, perhaps because these areas are less prepared to cope with heat waves than places like the Southwest, said Amruta Nori-Sarma, an environmental epidemiologist at Boston University School of Public Health, who led the study.The gap was evident across a range of mental health conditions, including mood and anxiety disorders, stress disorders, schizophrenia, substance use disorders and self-harm. “Extreme heat is an external stressor that seems to be exacerbating people’s mental health symptoms,” Dr. Nori-Sarma said.
The effect is likely to be even more pronounced among people with limited or no insurance coverage or who are experiencing homelessness, she added.Room temperature needs to dip below 68 degrees for a comfortable rest. On warmer nights, people fall asleep later and wake up earlier, and the quality of their sleep is poorer.
Days or weeks of sleeping in overly warm rooms can not only exacerbate chronic conditions like diabetes and heart disease, but also negatively affect psychiatric disorders, suicide risk, memory, mood and cognitive function.
Older adults and women are more likely to be affected: One study found that sleep loss among older adults is about twice as high as among younger people.
Some mental health problems may be an extension of physical issues. On a recent afternoon, Dr. Asim Shah, a psychiatrist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, found that nearly every patient’s pulse or heart rate was higher than it had been three months earlier.
“That increase in your heart rate can increase your anxiety,” Dr. Shah said. “So heat causes a lot of physical changes, which leads to a lot of emotional and mental changes.”
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