In this podcast episode, three experts join the host in discussing how climate change impacts mental health, the barriers to addressing this issue, and potential solutions for both climate change and mental health.
Listeners will also hear personal accounts from farmers in India and climate activists in the Philippines and Nigeria who have all experienced mental health challenges associated with climate change or environmental changes.
Teaching Tips
Positives
The podcast includes a variety of perspectives from experts, activists, and ordinary people around the world.
Some students may have their own experience with climate-related mental health issues and this podcast may help them feel seen and validated.
Additional Prerequisites
This episode discusses suicide, PTSD, anxiety, and depression. These are sensitive topics and teachers should use care and intentionality when incorporating these into the classroom.
Before listening to this podcast, students should have a solid understanding of climate change and its connection to extreme weather events like heat waves, droughts, floods, and storms.
Differentiation
This is a great resource for social-emotional learning and can help open a conversation about mental health, anxiety, depression, and stress.
After listening to the podcast, students can journal about their emotions and experiences with climate change and if comfortable share their thoughts with a peer or the class.
Students can draw inspiration from the activists highlighted in the podcast to brainstorm ways to address climate-related mental health concerns in their school or community.
Students can write letters to their local or national policymakers to push for more mental health support in their community or country.
Other helpful resources include this podcast on climate anxiety, this video about the emotions associated with climate change, and this youtube video about coping with climate anxiety.
Scientist Notes
The podcast focuses on the relationship between climate change and mental health as well as the significance of addressing climate change, because doing so will improve mental health. Financing communities and nations in danger of extreme weather events and natural disasters to help them integrate and promote mental health services is another important approach. It is suggested that you use this resource for instruction.
Standards
College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Standards
Dimension 2: Civics
D2.Civ.5.9-12 Evaluate citizens' and institutions' effectiveness in addressing social and political problems at the local, state, tribal, national, and/or international level.
Dimension 4: Taking Informed Action
D4.6.9-12 Use disciplinary and interdisciplinary lenses to understand the characteristics and causes of local, regional, and global problems; instances of such problems in multiple contexts; and challenges and opportunities faced by those trying to address these problems over time and place.
D4.7.9-12 Assess options for individual and collective action to address local, regional, and global problems by engaging in self-reflection, strategy identification, and complex causal reasoning.
Common Core English Language Arts Standards (CCSS.ELA)
Speaking & Listening (K-12)
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.11-12.3 Evaluate a speaker's point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence and rhetoric, assessing the stance, premises, links among ideas, word choice, points of emphasis, and tone used.
