Transcript
Transcript: A Conversation on Mental Health Resilience in the Face of Climate Change
[0:06 The screen transitions to Nancy Hamzawi on screen.]
Nancy Hamzawi (Public Health Agency of Canada): Hello and welcome, everyone. Good morning and welcome. Our event today is a conversation on mental health resilience in the face of climate change. The Canada School of Public Service is pleased to be hosting this event in collaboration with Environment and Climate Change Canada, which has been working with public servants to build a resilient and climate-capable government through resources like the climate literacy courses available on the Canada School learning platform. My name is Nancy Hamzawi. I am the Executive Vice President at the Public Health Agency of Canada and I am a proud alumnus from Environment and Climate Change Canada. It is an honour to be your event moderator today. I would first like to recognize that I am speaking to you from the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe people. I am deeply, deeply grateful to generations of Algonquin, people past, present and future, as the caretakers of this land and its waters. I recognize that you may be participating from various parts of the country, and so you may work on a different Indigenous territory. I encourage you to take a moment to think about the territory that you are sitting on. So I'm now pleased to introduce you to our excellent group of speakers.
[1:29 Retired Chief Patrick Michell, Dr. Daniel Rosenbaum and Dr. Katie Hayes appear in separate video chat panels.]
Retired Chief Patrick Michell is a member of the Nlaka'pamux Nation and has lived in British Columbia's Fraser Canyon all of his life. Almost three years ago, on June 30th, 2021, while he was Chief of the Kanaka Bar Indian Band, a devastating fire in Lytton destroyed Patrick's intergenerational family home, along with 90% of his hometown. Currently, Rebuild Director for the Lytton First Nation, Patrick will share about what it is, used to be like, what it is now, and about what might be coming for all of us. Dr. Daniel Rosenbaum is an Attending Psychiatrist with the Impact Assertive Community Treatment Team at the University Health Network, as well as a Palliative Education and Care for the Homeless team through Inner City Health Associates. He is a Clinical Lecturer at the University of Toronto. He's also a Co-Founder and faculty member with the University Health Network Psychedelic Psychotherapy Research Group, where he is Co-Principal Investigator with the Psilocybin Assisted Existential Attachment and Relational Therapy Research Program. Daniel is the Co-Author of the Canadian Psychiatric Association's position statement, entitled, "Mental Health and the Climate Crisis: A Call to Action for Canadian Psychiatrists." Dr. Katie Hayes is a Senior Policy Analyst at Health Canada's Climate Change and Health Office. She led the Mental Health and Climate Change chapter for the National Climate Change and Health Assessment report that was led by Health Canada and released in 2022. She completed her Ph.D. at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto, where she explored the mental health consequences of climate change with a specific focus on addressing the inequitable risks and impacts on marginalized groups.
This is a very impressive group. I am sufficiently humbled by your credentials, and I am very much looking forward to our conversation today. Through this learning event, we hope you all will be able to reflect on the importance of inner resilience in the face of climate change. We hope this conversation will inspire you both from the perspective of the role you play in your portfolio as public servants and as Canadians who are facing the real and compounding impacts of a changing climate.
[3:57 The screen transitions to the title card "Q & A" and then the first question appears, "What does mental resilience in the face of climate change mean to you?"]
Nancy Hamzawi: What does mental resilience in the face of climate change mean to you? What experiences have shaped your views? And perhaps on this, I'll start with Patrick.
Patrick Michell (Lytton First Nation): Thank you. (Speaks in Indigenous language). Good morning. Good morning. So, I've been living in the Fraser Canyon, as we just learned, all my life. And by 1988, I started observing changes to the land and the resources around me, and unequivocally, my region has accepted that the global air, land and water is heating up. Doesn't matter whether it's (inaudible), it doesn't matter whether it's natural. That heating up is producing extreme weather events of heat, wind, rain and cold, which then triggers, I call them, due climatic events. We had a heat dome where Lytton was registering 56 degrees Celsius. Then my town burned down. The year before, we had (inaudible) that swept through from the north in the summertime that tore houses off, knocked out things and trampolines 500 metres. In November of 2021, an atmospheric river. The fact that they had a name for it, the (inaudible), and the atmospheric river tells me we're aware of the risk, and I want to focus on that word, "awareness." Okay? As a First Nations person, raised as I was, I can maintain balance between mental, emotional, physical and spiritual. So the impacts on climate change and the events that they cause impact us in all four ways. We're focusing on the mental side. If you maintain balance in those four ways, you can weather the storm, so to speak. After the atmospheric river, we got four feet of snow and we froze. Extreme heat, wind, rain, cold, drought, all these sort of things, everything. I'm living at ground zero, and I've been living at ground zero for three years. The question for all of you, when we look at inner resilience then is, somebody said I should smile. I can't stop smiling. You might want to ask me why. So, I'm going to stop there just saying I live at ground zero and I'm okay.
Daniel Rosenbaum (University Health Network, Inner City Health Associates of Toronto): Thank you. Yeah, I can comment from here. I also want to start by expressing gratitude to be here. It's great to be in conversation with you all, Nancy, Katie and Patrick. Thank you to the organizers. Thank you to everyone who's in attendance. I am speaking from my position as a mental health care provider, as a psychiatrist, and as someone who has pondered my own emotional reactions to the same conditions I think we all are responding to, pondered the existential distress, if I might call it that, that I grapple with. And so, yeah, I mean, I declare that position because I think it's important to say that this is part of what informs my view of human emotions, and the way emotions and distress ought to be attended to. And I also say this to give myself permission, I think, to criticize the dominant ways that people like me or people in my profession tend to view distress as a sign of brokenness. And you know, the question in much of the conversation I think that we'll be having today has to do with resilience at the individual level. Part of the dominant view of emotions in our culture and within psychiatry, the profession that I'm here representing, is one of individual responsibility to attend to the downstream effects of very powerful upstream or structural forces. So, I think there's a lot of really interesting and important stuff that we will be talking about in terms of the individual, and resilience at the individual level, but I hope also we'll have a chance to be talking about communities, and systems and what resilience means at those levels, because the same forces that determine that drive, that moderate the grief that we feel, the anger, the outrage, all of those things also have a potential to lead to solidarity, to joining together, to these more pro-social outcomes that can come in our response to these forces, if you will.
So, one other thing that I thought I would mention, just to get us started, is simply the definition of mental health that the World Health Organization offers, because this is critical, I think. According to the World Health Organization, mental health reflects not only, or not merely the absence of a mental disorder, but rather it's a state of mental well-being that enables people to cope with the stresses of life, there's that resilience part, realize their abilities, learn well, work well, contribute to their community. So, again, when we're talking about distress and dysfunction, we're not just talking about mental disorders. Health really has to do with the capacity to flourish. And yeah, so, I'll leave it there as well and turn it to Katie.
Katie Hayes (Health Canada): Thank you so much. And again, just to reiterate what Daniel had mentioned, and just to say thank you to Daniel as well, I'm really humbled to be on this panel, and just really appreciate the opportunity to be here with you all, and to share some of these insights that I've been thinking about for quite some time. And really just feeding off of both what Patrick and Daniel had mentioned, is that we know that climate change is having some really significant effects on people, on populations, obviously on planetary health. And this was a big concern of mine. About ten years ago when I started on this research, I felt, as Daniel had mentioned, I didn't feel broken, I just felt really aware of what was going on, and really scared, and really distressed, and really wondering why at that time there wasn't a whole lot of research on the mental health implications and implications of climate change, particularly in the Canadian context. And so, for me, that was a big moment to really figure out I can't be the only one, I know I'm not the only one experiencing these things, and that it was something that really propelled me to have a deeper understanding of the issue, of the problem. And for me personally, it was how I was dealing with my own distress. For me, I go deep into the research. I need to know more, I need to understand, I need to not feel alone in this, and I also need to write about these things. Writing for me is very cathartic. It's how I make sense of the world. Many of us, it's how we all make sense of the world in some ways.
And so, for me, that was the starting point or the launching point to have a better understanding of how do I deal with my own personal distress, and really see that this climate distress that we're experiencing, how are we dealing it with it as individuals, but as Daniel had mentioned, what are we doing at the population level? How do we address this? We know that these impacts are happening at a much more frequent, and intense and complex fashion, as Patrick had mentioned from his experiences. So, what is it that we can do? What are the strategies that really help people feel that sense of mental resilience? And I think, for all of us, it's going to look different. And so, and I think that that's important, is to recognize that we may have these different experiences and also need to have a different sense of how we explore our sense of resilience. For some people, it might be diving deep and exploring those really tricky and difficult emotions. For some, or for some people at different times, it may mean taking a pause on reading the climate science. I know for me, working on climate change and health a day-to-day, it can get really challenging to continuously read the reports, see the media headlines, hear from my colleagues, hear from the public, and feel as though, wow, this is a large problem and feel really struck by how sometimes impossible it feels to address this. So, I have to check in. I have to check in with myself and say, "Hey, is this the time that I need to take a deep dive and research more? Or what do I need to do to fill my cup? Where is it that I'm going to find the strength? Is it talking in community? Is it talking to professional support? Is it finding the toolbox that I have to support my own wellbeing and making it so that I can be well to continue to do this work?" Because we do know that burnout in this realm of talking about climate change and working on climate change can also lead to burnout.
So, it's really being very aware of where I'm at, and checking in with myself and knowing what some of the research has told me. The importance of peer-to-peer support, finding that sense of community that is going to support me, finding the ways that I feel as though I can have some sense of agency or control. So, what types of climate mitigation activities do I take part in or do I support my family in? What are the ways that I can support the research on this? What are the ways that I can bring this to the public, and support the awareness, and do these types of conversations with people? And much more deeply, how do I take a better approach to listening? Listening to the varied experiences, particularly from those on the frontlines who are already dealing with health inequities? How do I stop, and listen and hear the voices on the frontline? And I'm going to stop there.
[14:20 The screen transitions to the question, "What do we not know about climate impacts on mental health?"]
Nancy Hamzawi: What do we not know about climate impacts on mental health? Are there current actions, and research directions and findings that we really should be aware of? And so, maybe on that one, I'll start with you, Katie.
Katie Hayes: Thank you, Nancy. I think there's many things we don't know. Unfortunately, in the broader picture when we talk about mental health research, not even thinking about climate change, but mental health, we often know, it has been under researched, under-resourced, and in particular climate change and mental health research has very much so been under resourced for a very long time. However, in the last, I would say five-ish years, there has been an explosion in this domain and this field of study, which I think is fantastic. I think there is still a lot of research that needs to be done on the frontlines with people who have lived experience, particularly Indigenous peoples, children and youth, people with preexisting condition, outdoor labourers, because we know that this is a very big concern for outdoor labourers whose livelihoods are tied to the climate, and there are socioeconomic impacts, and impacts to their community, mental health, their family mental health and wellbeing. Another area in particular, I think, that really is an important focus area for the research, is really what are we doing about it? What are the, we need more evidence-based information about effective strategies to support mental resilience in a changing climate. We have an understanding of some of the different types of supports that are very valuable. Peer-to-peer, climate cafes, engaging in climate activism, engaging with health professionals, of course.
But I think there is a really important role to look at evidence-based, effective adaptations. And again, very much focused on those on the frontlines. I think it's imperative. It's research that should be led by and very much informed by those who are on the frontlines. I also think that there is a, really, there is a lot of research coming up that's focused on children and youth, but there's always more to be done there because youth often contribute the least to the climate change problem. They are very much impacted. In their short lifespans, they've experienced a lot of climate-related events, and this is impacting directly their futures, and their sense of a future and their overall wellbeing. There's been some really excellent research, Canadian research led by Dr. Ellen Field and Dr. Lindsey Galloway, that looked at a survey of youth in Canada, aged 16 to 25, and their findings are, quite frankly, frightening. 38% of respondents indicated that climate change affects their day-to-day livelihoods, and 78% indicated that climate change affects their mental health. This is huge. This is something that we really need to focus on. We know that children and youth are already dealing with a whole complex of mental health stressors, including climate change.
And I think that the other key piece too, that we really need to focus on, is again, more evidence, and more information and research that really looks at climate migration, climate displacement, in particular in the Canadian context. We know the impacts of wildfire smoke, of flooding, etc., and often, displaced communities are displaced time, and time and time again. And what this does for community mental health, wellbeing, I think is very important and is very much a need on the global scale as well because climate change is happening everywhere and displacement is going to happen everywhere. So, these are very key research areas that I'm quite interested in. I'm very delighted to see the infusion, and interest and focus on climate change and mental health. But there is definitely a breadth of research that is still needed.
Daniel Rosenbaum: One of the clinical hats that I wear is as a community psychiatrist for people living with schizophrenia. And so, that work involves doing home visits to a multidisciplinary team. I live and work in Toronto, so it's a urban environment. Lots of my patients live in deep poverty. In the heat dome event, the same one that that Patrick has been talking about that affected his community, some epidemiological work across B.C showed that the group that faced the highest risk of mortality of death in the 2021 heat dome was people living with schizophrenia in terms of disease-related risk factors. So, people with schizophrenia had a higher risk of death than people with cardiovascular illness, and respiratory illness and chronic kidney disease. This is a really striking finding. And for someone like me, and I think for Katie as well, as a researcher, it invites the question, what is it about schizophrenia that puts people at high risk? And well, it turns out people with schizophrenia are more likely to live in poverty, are more likely to be subject to the urban heat island effect, where people who are homeless, who don't have tree cover, who are living in these sort of concrete environments, can't escape heat, particularly at nighttime. This really raises the risk of heat-related illness and death, and all sorts of other intersecting risk factors and vulnerabilities. So, I think in terms of what we know, related to a whole body of work related as far as other kinds of mental distress, what was revealed in the COVID-19 pandemic, all of those kinds of analyses about intersecting vulnerabilities also need to be brought to bear to the question of climate-related illness and distress.
[20:13 The screen transitions to the question, "How do we adapt to become resilient to yet another climate impact?"]
Nancy Hamzawi: How do we adapt to become resilient in that, yet again, another climate impact?
Patrick Michell: Okay, and so, and I think this is important, I'm going to reinforce this, is that the one big gap, and you'll often hear it in the newsletters as well as everything else, is that climate change needs leadership. And in 1988, when the world's scientists said bad stuff is happening, I didn't pay attention. But when a 12-year-old spoke at Rio, I did. When Severn Suzuki was 12, she went down to Rio in 1992 and she said unequivocally, "Climate change is real and we should start preparing for it." In an Indigenous community, you value the input of each and every voice from the oldest to the youngest. So, when a child speaks, we listen. So, when you start looking at Kanaka Bar's story, since 1992, we've set in to play a process to reestablish physiological foundations. Air, water, food, shelter. There's not a lot I can do about the air, but I can prepare my infrastructure, my bills, and my life and lifestyle for the contamination and the temperature swings. Water? Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. We put in reservoirs and separated potable water from non-potable water. Food? We're going our own meats, fruits and vegetables, engendering enough for the market so we have an economy. Shelter? We're stop building homes that burn. As for flooding? Trust me, after 10,000 years, we've learned not to build in a floodplain. And if you live in a floodplain, well, I hate to say this, you can't say caveat emptor. It will suck to be you the next time an atmospheric river hits. But the point is, with awareness, over 30 years, we've built physiological foundations. Many of the decks that I have shared, and always with Hardwired to Adapt, a show on CBC. And I like CBC, we should send them more money. I'm just saying don't defund them, send more money. Human beings are hardwired to adapt. The book that I showed earlier talks about we had time to transition, adapt.
[22:24 The book title appears on screen: "Climate Change and the Health of Nations" by Anthony J. McMichael]
What people don't understand now is we still have time to transition and adapt, but we have a compressed time, and this is what the stress is coming from.
[22:38 The screen transitions to the questions, "What influencing factors play a role in mental health outcomes in the face of climate change?" and "What role can individuals play to support one another?"]
Nancy Hamzawi: What influencing factors play a role in mental health outcomes in the face of climate change, and what role can individuals play to support one another?
Katie Hayes: A sense of community and social capital, so a sense of community as our feelings of belonging, and our social capital, or the actual networks that we have, came up time and time again as being something that really supported a sense of resilience. And in some of the literature, it was also surveyed that that was more important than economic assistance in post-disaster recovery. I mean, absolutely, we need the economic assistance in post-disaster recovery, but it just demonstrates the importance of community, of coming together. And I think from the individual perspective, as I have mentioned before, is that there has been some really great research about the role of peer-to-peer networks, finding the groups that are culturally relevant, and applicable, and that feel as though you are able to speak in, feel at home within a community, to explore, to express and to figure out how to deal with these challenging emotions. Just a plug for one of my favourite books is, 'Act of Hope,' by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone, where it's really, a lot of times this is where the climate cafes that many folks are kind of bringing together, it's a peer-to-peer resource where we talk about the depths of climate emotions and perhaps work on solutions together. This book is kind of a foundational resource to that.
A few other things that have been really important in terms of factors that influence mental health resilience are how we talk about climate change, and how that affects our mental health and wellbeing. We often get media reports, we often see the scientific literature, and if we're already awake, and aware and alarmed to the issue, a lot of these messages just push us to even more heightened anxiety and distress. So, I think it's very important that when we're communicating about the climate change problem, that we're also talking about ways to address or protect population health. So, I think this is really important in the messaging piece. Fundamental to supporting mental health and resilience is access to care, and I think that that's a very important piece, is knowing what types of care that we need and ensuring that people have access to it, that the care is culturally relevant and culturally supportive, that we're increasing mental health care training to health care providers to talk about how climate change affects mental health. And to be quite honest, one of the biggest influencing factors in addressing all this, we all, it's multisectoral, multi-disciplinary, whole of society, whole of the world needs to work on this problem. It is not going to be addressed by individuals alone. As Daniel has mentioned, we are really, there's a need for the structural pieces. We really need to have an understanding of how we can work together to address these issues, these higher arching issues that really make this a complex and unique issue, the mental health impacts of climate change, is that we need to start addressing the climate adaptation and mitigation to really support mental health and wellbeing. Thanks.
Nancy Hamzawi: Thank you, Katie. I have a whole number of other questions that I wanted to ask, but there are several questions that have come in from the audience. So, I'm going to have one final question of my own and then switch to the audience questions. And so, I do need, I feel like I need to round it out, Daniel, in terms of asking you what your favourite book is, but also on that theme, just how does climate literacy play a role in mental health resilience in the context of climate change?
[26:17 The screen transitions to the question "How does climate literacy play a role in mental health resilience in the context of climate change?"]
Daniel Rosenbaum: Okay. Thank you. I appreciate both those questions. And I really thought I was going to be the first person on the call to make reference to Joanna Macy. Katie beat me to it, but okay, I will mention another book of hers, which I would strongly recommend, which is called, 'World as Lover, World as Self.' So, originally published in 1991, but was just reissued. The other book Katie mentioned, 'Active Hope,' I think is an excellent one for people working in the public service. It's written for a general audience. It includes activities. I think it would be a great book club, reading group kind of thing to do together to bolster resilience, and best done in community. And, 'World as Lover, World as Self,' Macy, I should say, is a systems theorist, and a Buddhist philosopher and environmental activist, and the first third of, ''World as Lover, World as Self,' is her articulating, giving voice to her understanding of Buddhist philosophy as it relates to notions like radical interconnectedness and the sense of responsibility that flows from the recognition of our radical interconnectedness with each other, with all beings. And also, what I so appreciate about Macy and her work is this orientation to emotions. So, okay, I'll transition into the, your question here about climate literacy, because I think in this, I think this has been spoken to already, is that in some respect, climate literacy can be a risk factor, frankly, for heightened distress at this moment. In some respects, it's not that we lack information, it's not that we lack the capacity to interpret the information. In fact, it's precisely because of how that information lands with us and our sense of the disconnect between what we're hearing and what is being done about it that leads to this heightened distress.
And so, I think that the flipside of the coin of climate literacy is about emotional literacy. And so, here here's where I think that the Macy-an? formulation can be so useful, because for Macy and her Buddhist psychology, it is opening our hearts, allowing ourselves to be stirred by suffering, is to be appreciated as, recognized as a sign of strength, in fact. So, her, the language she uses to capture grief, sadness, despair, anger, rage, the range of emotions that can occur, her formulation is called pain for the world. And this pain for the world, she suggests, is a perfectly normal, and in fact, healthy response to a world in trauma. This is a sign of healthy emotional functioning, when we respond to these abnormal situations with a sense of, "Something is going on here." And so, what we need to do, what she suggests, is that we need to give ourselves and each other the permission to feel. And in this formulation, that is a radical act because dominant culture says don't feel, don't express sadness in particular. And when we feel, she suggests, a kind of turning can occur. Paradoxically, when we move through, when we allow this awareness to sink to a deeper level and it can flow through us, a weight can lift. And when a weight lifts, we can see with new eyes, we can regain clarity, we can have a sense of renewed commitment to act with others in service of what we love and care about. Now, when we do that, we open ourselves up again to the grief, because grief is an expression of love. And when we're acting and we're seeing these losses transpiring around us, when we hear news from distant regions of the world about flooding coastal regions, climate refugees and so forth, we are affected, we do grieve. And again, this is in Massey's formulation, this is a spiral. She calls it the work that reconnects the spiral of the work that reconnects. We have gratitude for the world, for what we love. That gratitude often leads to pain for the world in response to painful situations, painful news. We feel that we honour the pain for the world, and when we do so, we can see with new eyes, we can emerge, the weight lifts. Then we act, we act with others, and so on, and so on and so on. So, yeah, all that is to say, certainly, cosigning Joanna Macy's work. And I've lost myself even with your question, Nancy, so I'm going to stop talking now.
Nancy Hamzawi: No, that was fantastic. Thank you. Thank you so much.
[31:27 The screen transitions to the question "Do you have any thoughts or advice on how to stay realistic and informed in our environmental context?"]
Nancy Hamzawi: Do you have any thoughts or advice on how to stay realistic and informed in our environmental context? In other words, I want to protect myself and my mental health, but I do not want to live in the darkness, like ignoring environmental and climate news. So, I think on this one I'll start with Patrick, and if others want to weigh in.
Patrick Michell: I think, and thank you very much, and for the audience member who shared that. Trust me when I say don't live in a vacuum. What I do is, I don't, and I don't limit myself either. When I joke about not reading the national adaption strategy, I have also not read any of the IPCC reports. They pay people good money to do that. I understand the risk, I understand the probability, understand the consequence, I understand frequency, I understand duration, I understand intensity, I understand the solutions. And I'm not asking you to cherry pick. Do not live in a vacuum. Find that community, find your why. And it's there. With great power comes great responsibility. And I'll say that again. Do not sit on your ass. Apathy is not an emotion. I don't know what apathy is, but I don't think it's an emotion. You have a positive responsibility to self and the people within a community to be informed, but more importantly, those solutions. And then, I've said again, hope flows from action. I don't care what it is. I don't track, for example, the political turnout. We have a federal election coming up in the next little bit, and a provincial election, and if I find out that a record low number of people showed up, Canadians better watch out because I'm going to be really angry. You have a power. We're experiencing death by a thousand cuts. Stop cutting the incredible power of one. But one plus one equals two. Two plus two equals four. Or does it mean five? So, when we start pooling our resources, the synergy, okay? And I want you to, when you find that social network, that safety network, wherever it is, maybe it's down at Starbucks, I don't know. I can't afford Starbucks. And their coffee has just way too much caffeine in it. Meanwhile, I've got four cups rockin'. I think you're, don't live in a vacuum. And what happens here is pick what you want to work on because it is overwhelming. Do not be overwhelmed. And if, give a chance, I'm going to say this word in Latin, which everybody knows how to speak Latin today, 'Fiat justitia ruat caelum.' And that's how I'll end.
[34:17 The meaning of the Latin phrase appears on screen: "Let justice be done, though the heavens fall".]
[34:23 The screen transitions to the question "How can we better support public servants during times of climate change crisis?]
Nancy Hamzawi: How can we better support public servants during times of climate change crisis? Like the example here was evacuation. So, maybe I'll kick off with you, Katie.
Katie Hayes: Yeah, I think increasingly we're all dealing with this. And when it's not a climate crisis, it is tricky, right, a challenge. We're frequently seeing the impacts of wildfires and the messages that we're getting, that wildfire season is starting earlier, and that we have to be prepared for these things. I think it's really great to be informed about these increasing risks, but it is, as I mentioned, how do we support the mental health and wellbeing as we're going through this, as our awareness about these impending risks are occurring, during and well after, because our mental and emotional responses aren't going to have a specific timeline of when we're going to experience them, right? We could be having a lot of significant anxiety thinking about the wildfire season, and what's already occurring and what happened last year. We may also have longer-term mental health impacts after we've been exposed or experienced an event. If we look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, once safety and security has been established, oftentimes we start to see a lot of the mental health needs bubble to the surface. I know that my research that I looked at in High River, I looked at five years post-flooding event, and the amount of mental health needs that still existed in that community were quite significant. So, I think it's this constant opportunity to ensure that we are communicating about the mental health impacts and the resources. As public servants, we often receive the emails that go out when there is a large health threat that's going on in the world or a conflict that's going on in the world. People may want to seek the employee assistance program. I think we need to do the same when there are these climate risks, and particularly when we're dealing with evacuations, people's families, livelihoods, watching it on the news, it's quite distressing. So, ensuring that people know what kind of the Government of Canada resources are available, but also having these conversations and noting that what resources are going to be supportive of people may look differently. So, it's really opening that opportunity up. And again, can't talk enough about the importance of finding a really supportive ear, whether that's in your community, in your family, to have these big conversations. Thanks.
[36:47 The screen transitions to the question, "What are the steps I can take when I'm feeling overwhelmed from climate change?"]
Nancy Hamzawi: What are the steps I can take when I'm feeling overwhelmed from climate change? What are the steps that I can take to heal? Go ahead, Daniel. Looks like you're ready to lean in there.
Daniel Rosenbaum: (laughs) Yeah, of course. I'll try not to be, hopefully won't be too repetitive. I mean, I think it's important to say that what one might do is very individualized. What sort of resources surround you that you typically access when you are in need, when there is an emotional need, a spiritual need and so forth. I think I would say that one of the things we might not always do is honour the feeling of overwhelm, to allow it, to be with it, to sit with it, to be curious about it, and in that process, noticing where it might lead. Usually, I mean, emotions are evolutionarily ingrained in the same way that pain is. Pain is a warning sign of danger, anxiety, same. Our feelings, when we can access them and when they are tolerable to us, can teach us things. So that overwhelm, whatever it might mean or however it's experienced, suggests, I think, that you're a loving, living person, sensitive to the environment, aware of what's happening and where that might take you in terms of work in the world. I mean, presumably being on a call like this and being engaged in the public service means that you're wanting to contribute to addressing these massive problems. And so, again, coming from, acting from that emotionally grounded heart place is key, I would say, in terms of healing. I mean, healing for me invokes restoration, regeneration. I think there's a, there is a current that one picks up in climate mental health circles that suggests that activism is the antidote to climate despair. And in some ways that's similar to the kinds of things that I've been saying, that doing, getting involved, it is important. And indeed, often, the kinds of actions that are good for our mental, or good for the environment, are also good for our mental health. When we go out into the community and we're planting trees, for example, nature exposure, nature connectedness is good for our mental health. Doing these actions together with others is good for our mental health. But it's not merely the action. I think it needs to be done in, these things are not mutually exclusive, the emotional work and the action. And in fact, I think they support one another and one is needed for the other. I hope that hasn't been too rambly. I'm interested to hear Katie, Patrick in terms of personal practices when you are feeling overwhelmed. I think, Katie, you spoke about a certain intellectual tendency. Read, understand, pore over the literature. I mean, again, these things are individualized. So, I'd be interested to hear what your approach is.
Katie Hayes: Just very quickly, I know we're nearing time, but I was just going to say, just to your point, Daniel, I think that there is, we do live in a society where we often think that doing and producing is going to get us to an end goal. And sometimes, the hardest thing, just like you articulated with Joanna Macy's work, is being with and sitting with those difficult emotions. So, my tendency is to do, but that's because I'm avoiding really looking at deeply processing the emotions and sitting with the emotions, which I think is the harder thing to do. But I know that that's the thing that's going to support me maybe the most. So, that's just my own individual reflection. Thanks.
[41:08 The screen transitions to the question, "How can I help someone else who may be impacted by climate change from a mental health perspective?"]
Nancy Hamzawi: how can I help someone else who may be impacted by climate change from a mental health perspective? So, the healing combined with helping someone else.
Patrick Michell: So, I'm not sure if I can, but I think (inaudible) I have used aircraft reference. I think the most important thing to that question is, when I'm feeling overwhelmed, that tells me that the person has self-awareness, and that is 99% of the battle. If you don't know, how do you find a solution? Now, I can't tell you how to heal from being overwhelmed, but I can tell you what to do, at least what I do. When I feel it, and nobody's impervious to this, I say, "Oh, that's a gooder. I should stay in bed. Oh, I should not go into work." Or, "Oh, I shouldn't take the call from the credit card collection agency." And then I acknowledge that feeling, and then I start laughing and I pick up a cup of coffee and say, "That too shall pass. Now, let's take a pickaxe, regardless of size, and chip away at it." Overwhelming means it's too much. But you always have to take little steps. There's always a path forward from all things. One of my favourites is, is to listen, listen to myself, but listen to the wind in the trees, listen to the water as it flows, listen to the bees that are buzzing, watching that go by. It could take me an hour to walk a city block because I'm so aware and alive with the environment around me. What we've done is I will not desensitize myself from the world. This is important. I have empathy, and I have compassion and my love can also overwhelm me. I am not a saviour. Although people have called me JCP for years. Jesus Christ Patrick, give it a break. Anyway, I'm not a saviour. What I wanted to do is I just wanted to acknowledge my feelings, thank the creator, express my gratitude. Be alert, don't let it be debilitating. When it is, find those simple steps solutions, find that community, find your social network. And the same situation is, when I said earlier about the public service things, look to your left, look to your right. These are your brothers and sisters. How are you doing? Make eye contact.
And I can tell that people know sincerity and they also know bullshit when they hear it, right? If you're truly concerned about your brother and sister, your brother and sister will know it. But if you're just saying things for saying things sakes, I don't want that. What I want in this world, a collective global existential crisis to know that I am not alone and that there are people like me out there.
Nancy Hamzawi: Thank you very much, all of you. Patrick, Daniel, Katie, that was wonderful. You left us with many incredible insights and wisdom today, and I'm sure dinner tables across the country are going to have a fantastic conversation tonight. You have masterfully taken us from ground zero to a population health level. So, on behalf of myself and the organizing team at Environment and Climate Change Canada, the Canada School of Public Service, thank you so much for being part of this important conversation. And for those of you who have participated in today's event, thank you so, so much and have a wonderful rest of the day. Take care, everyone.
[44:44 The CSPS logo appears onscreen.]
[45:00-45:10 The Government of Canada logo appears on screen .]
