The Salmon Arm had covered the smoke of the fire for days. A record heatwave had killed nearly 600 people across the province just weeks earlier. When the city of Lytton, BC, set a Canadian temperature of 49.6 C – a day later completely – the displaced were added to the steady stream of patients at Shuswap Lake General Hospital. Emergency physician Lori Adamson recalls that stretchers were lined up in the hallway. The number of patients suffering from heat illness and smoke inhalation meant that her unit ran out of available beds and nurses. Then came the suicides. “Many of the young people I saw were trying to commit suicide because of climate change,” he told Glacier Media. “They are afraid that they will never live longer than the climate catastrophe and global warming; they have openly expressed it.” Adamson says that at least three young patients she saw tried to end their lives due to drug overdose because they were afraid of climate change. Some were taken to hospitals that could provide higher levels of care. The doctor does not know how or if all the patients survived. There are emerging indications that the government’s inaction on climate change is seriously affecting the health of young people. Last September, a global survey of 10,000 young people in 10 countries found that almost half of those between the ages of 16 and 25 reported psychological distress due to climate change. In some of the most indicative signs, 58 percent of those polled said governments were betraying future generations. 75 percent said “the future was scary”.

“CAUSES A SPIRAL”

In recent years, suicide rates in British Columbia have been steadily declining since the peak of 2014. But provincial numbers hide some significant regional differences. Since 2018, the BC Internal Health Authority has recorded the highest suicide rate, with the Northern Health Authority far behind. How the effects of climate change will affect these numbers is less clear. Experts are just beginning to investigate the relationship between climate change and mental health. After a year in which a series of extreme weather events devastated British Columbia, this work has already revealed some important trends. A study released in January 2022 found that the dome of heat that engulfed British Columbia in late June led to an average 13 percent increase in anxiety about the effects of climate change. However, the study did not investigate the effects of climate change on suicide rates. Kiffer Card, co-author of the study, said it was not surprising that climate stress pushed people to commit suicide. “One of the main features of suicide is the feeling of hopelessness,” said the epidemiologist, who is studying the effects of climate change on mental health at Simon Fraser University. “Surely the weather and worries about the future can give you that extra boost to end your life.” Suicidal thoughts are rarely the result of one factor. Card says the combined effects of the ongoing opioid crisis or lack of cognition and control in some people are on a long list of factors that can trigger a mental health crisis. Some people look at the world around them and say to themselves, “Climate change is here. My neighborhood is on fire. “Where is my future?” said the Card. “It causes a spiral.”

CANADA AT THE CROSSROADS FOR CLIMATE SUITABILITY

To date, little research has been done on how climate change will affect suicide rates in Canada. But that is changing. “We know that ecological stress is a real thing – that it is completely diagnosable – and that depression is also linked to people’s feelings of helplessness,” said Tim Takaro, a physician and scientist studying the health effects of climate change. “What I do not know is how many people with climate-related depression will take their own lives.” A report by Takaro earlier this year examining the health effects of climate change in Canada found that in 15 previous studies, suicide rates had risen with high ambient temperatures. Studies in other jurisdictions that measure the impact of a warming world on suicide rates give a bleak picture. In 2020, a team of researchers – including University of British Columbia environmental economics researcher Patrick Baylis – looked at the relationship between suicide rates and temperature data in the United States and Mexico. Long-term historical data suggest that for every increase of one degree Celsius in the average monthly temperature, suicide rates increased by 0.7 percent in the US counties and 2.1 percent in the municipalities of Mexico. By 2050, researchers have found that global warming could lead to an additional 9,000 to 40,000 more suicides between the two countries. This is a change in suicide rates comparable to what is estimated during an economic downturn, suicide prevention programs or gun control laws, the study concluded. And while it is unclear how their findings apply to a more northerly jurisdiction such as Canada, the study found that “the effect is similar in warmer to colder regions and has not diminished over time.” “Historical adjustment,” the data suggest, is “limited.” “It’s very creepy,” Takaro said of the results. “I do not think it is significantly different from the US, only that it is happening a little faster here.” According to the International Commission on Climate Change (IPCC), global warming is expected to accelerate two to three times faster in Canada than the global average. It is not just the temperature that can affect mental health. Last month, IPCC scientists themselves discovered that rising temperatures were contributing to a growing global fire crisis. For many living in BC, this crisis is already here.

SADNESS IN ACTION

In 2017, Raymond Ford and his wife returned from 17 years of life in the United States. The plan was to keep it simple – buy a piece of land near the 100 Mile House and live a quiet life. Unfortunately for the couple, they returned home the same year that the BC Wildfire Service describes as “one of the worst fires in British Columbia history”. Ford and his wife temporarily moved to a trailer parked on a ranch outside the city. The fire hit the area, burning huge areas of forest and driving people away from their homes. The couple were among 65,000 people evacuated that year. “At one point, we were surrounded by four fires,” Ford said. Ford has Asperger’s Syndrome, a disorder on the autism spectrum that is often associated with the ability to focus too much on a single task. He says it pushed him to become a self-taught scientist. He has spent years selling and maintaining mass spectrometers, sophisticated devices that can be used to test everything from cannabis purity and prescription drugs to dating an archaeological find with carbon. But the neurodevelopmental disorder also makes it difficult for Ford to regulate his emotions, a situation that became even more fragile after his father died a week before the fires. After 21 days of evacuation, Ford says the experience left him afraid to go near a fire and soon, he says he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). “I will never forget to see this fire coming against me,” he said. “So much disaster.” “It just shows that you are not in control of your life sometimes when something like this happens.” This until he found a way to regain control. Since the 2017 fires, Ford has immersed itself in the science of climate change, joining the Climate Emergency Forum, a defense team that has participated in the last two United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP) conferences. , Raymond Ford plants a garden on his property near the 100 Mile House, BC. Ford channeled his once-exhausting anxiety about climate change into his land fire and turning it into an oasis for wildlife. Raymond Ford / Facebook When Ford and his wife finally moved to their land, they began removing dead pines and old dead logs, anything that could serve as fuel for another fire. “I was born with a wonderful gift called Asperger’s,” he said. “What are you doing? What can you specifically control?” “As my brain works, I take the sadness or the pain and turn it into action.” “It provides comfort for your mental health. “This is starting to reduce stress, which is more grounded,” he said. At the same time, he began to “study like crazy”, absorbing everything he could about climate change. When he saw a video of Swedish climate activist Greta Tunberg talking for the first time, he said he immediately connected with her. “He pulled me right away because I’m on the spectrum,” he said. “I’m starting to meet all these different people working directly with the United Nations, with climate talks and things like that. And from that, I was able to draw strength to learn that I am not alone in all this. “ But for others on the Ford trajectory, tackling an endless cycle of fire and smoke was too much.

“WE COULD NOT SEE THE SUN”

When the thermal dome collapsed in BC. last June, fires followed closely, creating in some cases their own weather systems in the form of storms of cumulative fires. The very active storms – in many cases, …