Last year Australian doctors wrote up a case of a 17-year-old Melbourne boy who was convinced if he took a drink, people would die.
[The doctors call it] the first known instance of “climate change delusion” …
The psychiatrist who runs the inpatient unit where the boy was treated, Robert Salo, has now seen several more patients with psychosis or anxiety disorders focused on climate change, as well as children who are having nightmares about global-warming related natural disasters.
It would be surprising if global warming — or “climate change,” if you will — had no effect on people’s psyches.
After Hurricane Katrina, problems like severe mental illness rose, including depression, PTSD, anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and a variety of phobias. These rates went from 6.1 percent to 11.3 percent, among those who lived in affected regions, a 2006 study by the Hurricane Katrina Community Advisory Group said.
The rates of mild-to-moderate mental illness also double, going from 9.7 percent to 19.9 percent.
Denial, and Gore derangement syndrome, may be other symptoms.
[Let It Snow by Bah Humbug]
Global warming alarmism (i.e., fear of global warming) is the thing that is “driving people mental.”
I was interested to find this blog. I know that the mental health of many people has been affected over the years by big scary events that are given much loud, vivid news coverage at the time. This is an artefact of modern mass-communication technology. 20 years ago I had a book published on different economic concepts to point the way to a sustainable world economy. Someone who liked the book contacted me this year to suggest that I update and re-publish it as a blog. She set up the blog, and the book is now complete on the blog in a series of postings. There are now also additional pieces on global warming and other subjects. Here is the link:
http://www.economicsforaroundearth.com
With all good wishes,
Charles Pierce
Is there a scientific consensus on that, Robert? 😉
Disasters and fear of the Earth’s balance getting screwed up upsets and depresses some people? Really? Say it isn’t so!
Thank you, Paul. Below is another consensus that may be of interest. It’s funny now, but it wasn’t funny at the time. I was a teenager then and I remember being quite worried about it. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/13/AR2009021302514.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns. EXCERPT:
In the 1970s, “a major cooling of the planet” was “widely considered inevitable” because it was “well established” that the Northern Hemisphere’s climate “has been getting cooler since about 1950” (New York Times, May 21, 1975). Although some disputed that the “cooling trend” could result in “a return to another ice age” (the Times, Sept. 14, 1975), others anticipated “a full-blown 10,000-year ice age” involving “extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation” (Science News, March 1, 1975, and Science magazine, Dec. 10, 1976, respectively). The “continued rapid cooling of the Earth” (Global Ecology, 1971) meant that “a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery” (International Wildlife, July 1975). “The world’s climatologists are agreed” that we must “prepare for the next ice age” (Science Digest, February 1973). Because of “ominous signs” that “the Earth’s climate seems to be cooling down,” meteorologists were “almost unanimous” that “the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century,” perhaps triggering catastrophic famines (Newsweek cover story, “The Cooling World,” April 28, 1975). Armadillos were fleeing south from Nebraska, heat-seeking snails were retreating from Central European forests, the North Atlantic was “cooling down about as fast as an ocean can cool,” glaciers had “begun to advance” and “growing seasons in England and Scandinavia are getting shorter” (Christian Science Monitor, Aug. 27, 1974).
A few old news items do not a consensus make. I find the denial and flat-earthism over this topic to be depressing, not to mention a bit embarrassing.