Two World Problems Connected : Air Pollution and Mental Health

If you were to take a quick look through a newspaper, you will find countless articles about mental health and the state of our world. Everyone knows that two of our main problematic topics of today are the stigma around mental health and the fact that our world is deteriorating. Well, what if I told you that, strangely enough, air pollution is causing increased mental health problems in children. Two huge topics unfortunately connected.

A study of how children react when the pollutant particle PM2.5 spikes was recently released. This is the particle responsible for causing mental health problems in children. This particle can cause physical damage as well. For example, it can get into the lungs and even the bloodstream causing heart and respiratory problems. Physical problems from a pollutant doesn't sound strange, but mental health problems are not something researchers were expecting. Researchers have found that whenever this particle occurs in higher amounts than usual in the air, there are increased visits to psychiatric hospitals. Symptoms vary depending on how much exposure one gets to this particle. Visits to the hospital on the same day of the spike are often for “schizophrenia, while more visits for adjustment disorders or suicidal thoughts came one or two days later” (CLICK HERE to learn more) There are a number of other studies researching topics very similar to this. It is clear that climate change definitely has a negative effect on our bodies. Fighting climate change and air pollution won’t only help the earth, but it will help us too.

Considering the problems surrounding mental health and our world, shouldn’t we do something? Mental health and climate change has been gaining much more attention lately so, one would think this combined problem would be a more widely discussed topic. If only it were that simple, to gain attention and have a solution. But, gaining attention is a great place to start. Would you discuss this topic with a friend if you knew it could potentially help find ways to solve the problem? Are the effects of climate change on human health being overlooked? Is pollution really one of the reasons why so many kids have anxiety in today's world? Does climate change being linked to mental health issues draw up more reasons to help the earth? What do you see happening in the future relating to the changing earth and its negative effects on us?