Climate Emergency

IAPSP's Statement on Climate Emergency

If we...imagine a post-carbon world of climate justice, can we begin to create it now?...If not, what cultural narratives, profoundly rooted in our ghostly unconsciousness, prevent us? (Orange, 2017, p.30-31)

 IAPSP recognizes the dangers of the climate emergency. As a global mental health community dedicated to improving the lives of our patients and our communities we have a responsibility to address this crisis. We recognize global heating’s deleterious impact on Earth’s life-sustaining weather systems and the complex interplay with corporate and political policies. In our commitment to acknowledge our own distress and that of our patients, we seek to: 1) formulate a cohesive theory that recognizes self as embedded in ecosystems; 2) recognize the inequitable impact of climate change on marginalized populations, and 3) take an organizational stand that includes proposing remediable actions.

 The effects of climate breakdown are far-reaching. As human beings we are nature. With humility, we recognize we live not only as individuals but as a collective force, situated and dependent on the web of life for our survival.  We are ethically responsible to ourselves and our descendants to preserve ecosystems whose loss will diminish and limit lives and are catastrophic for increasing numbers of humans and animals.

 Two types of diverse weather change require our collective action as self psychologists. The first is sudden catastrophic loss. This category includes extraordinary events such as climate-change intensified wildfires, floods, hurricanes, and typhoons, such as the recent wildfires in Los Angeles and the devastating floods in Europe and the Mediterranean. The impact of these disasters is seen in the destruction of homes, and in the hobbling of economic stability which then affects nature, infrastructure, community ties, family life, and relationships. 

 The second kind of climate change – also caused by global heating – is often referred to as slow violence (Nixon, 2013). Slow violence  is observed in droughts, such as those in Italy and throughout the Southern Hemisphere, leading to mass agricultural failure sparking both civil wars and mass migrations of millions. Such slow violence occurs over time as climate becomes unpredictable – deteriorating the stability of land, people, and societies for generations to come. 

 Both kinds of trauma impact the most vulnerable amongst us while climate-related anxieties for clinicians and patients alike are increasing. How do we acknowledge and address the mutual influence of the world’s turmoil on our personal and professional lives? 

 Heightened anxieties about climate change can affect the clinical relationship as therapist and patient wrestle with feeling existential dread, powerlessness, and denial. Recognizing our responsibility for depleting the earth’s resources neglects our interest in and concern for humanity. 

 As self psychologists, we share values that include empathy and an emphasis on the relational as healing. We need to add to the therapeutic context an awareness and readiness to engage our patients’ distress created by issues of climate change. Thus it is vital we grapple with experiences of grief, anguish, moral injury, sadness and guilt, to effectively foster an attuned understanding and thorough exploration of our patients’ experiences as well as our own.  

 IAPSP has taken concrete steps to minimize our environmental footprint. These measures will be amplified by taking further measures that may entail accepting losses and inconveniences. In modeling the acceptance of doing more with less, we offer a more humane legacy and viability of the earth to younger generations.

References:

Nixon, R.(2013) Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Boston: Harvard     University Press.   

Orange, D (2017). Climate Crisis, Psychoanalysis and Radical Ethics. New York: Routledge.