Climate Mental Health Post-Election in the U.S. - Climate Psychiatry Alliance Leaders React, Process, and Look Forward

In this episode, Dr. Emily Schutzenhofer and the Climate Psychiatry Alliance panel discuss the emotional impact of the recent U.S. election on climate mental health. They explore shared anxieties around climate distress and provide insights on resilience, community, and advocacy to help listeners stay engaged and hopeful amid uncertainty. Tune in for thoughtful guidance on supporting mental well-being and meaningful climate action.

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Transcript

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Hi, everyone. Welcome to this special episode of the Climate Psychiatry Alliance podcast. Today, we're convening a small roundtable to talk about post-general election anxiety we know is being felt in so many different forms right now, and to help people think about what is ahead for individuals dealing with climate distress and in what's ahead for climate mental health advocacy, too. I'll be our host today. I'm Dr. Emily Schutzenhofer, a psychiatrist in Seattle and a leader of the Climate Psychiatry Alliance's Early Career Network. I'm grateful today to be joined by Dr. Robin Cooper and Dr. Josh Wurzel. Robin, you appeared in our first podcast episode, but might you reintroduce yourself briefly for the listeners? Well, first off, thanks for having me here. This is something that I've been passionate about and the election impacts on climate change. I'm Robin Cooper. I'm a psychiatrist in San Francisco. I have an appointment at the University of California, San Francisco Department of Psychiatry, but I'm one of the co-founders and president now of Climate Psychiatry Alliance, and I have my finger in a lot of different pots that relate to climate and health. I welcome this conversation today. It's going to be so important. Thank you, Robin. So glad you're here. And Josh, welcome to the CPA Podcast. Would you mind introducing yourself briefly for us? Certainly. It's a pleasure to be here. My name is Josh. I'm a child and adolescent psychiatrist at the Institute of Living and at Yale in Connecticut, and I wear a couple of different hats. I'm honored to be on the steering committee right now for the Climate Psychiatry Alliance, but also I am the chair of the American Psychiatric Associations Committee on Climate Change and Mental Health. I have a similar role as a co-chair for the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and I was recently appointed the Climate and Health Scholar for the National Institute of Mental Health. And I have to say that I am speaking tonight entirely on my own behalf, not on any kind of official representative stance for those organizations. Great. So glad to have you here, Josh. So, you know, here, we're not political analysts, but we are psychiatrists, and so we know a lot about human psychology and behavior. And it will be forthcoming, too, that our particular lens here is one that's very concerned about climate change's irrevocable effects on global societies and human health, including mental health. And so with all of that said, how are these election results sitting with us? Is there any clarity that we've gained thinking about what people are responding to at the polling booths? I think what we're seeing is that there is anxiety, deep anxiety on both sides. I think that on the side that was voting for Vice President Harris, there was this sense of democracy is in the balance, that issues like Roe v. Wade, a woman's right to choose, the sanctity of kind of being an immigrant in America, climate change, all these things were on the ballot. And on the other side of the aisle, with prior President Trump, now President-elect, there was this sense of America as we know it is on the decline, that the uncertainty about the future, whether it was jobs or even gender, what it means to be male or female, and certainly the economy, all of that was in the balance. And both sides felt very strongly that the other one was going to lead the country to chaos. And so I can speak more to this, but I think that there were a lot of psychological defenses and psychological defenses being the tools that we use to try to process anxiety and metabolize it, cope with it in a way that allows us to move on. And those defenses can be constructive. They can lead to problem solving, they can lead to gathering more information and community building. They can also lead us to be counterproductive, whether it's engaging in denialism, identifying to gain strength with a strong man, even to the point of becoming engaged in fantasy and conspiracy theory. So I think that on both sides to some extent, but maybe we see it more flagrantly on the MAGA side, there were these psychological defenses that were not constructive and that led people to vote, but the way they did. Just on a personal level, I'm just going to say, this is a very disturbing moment for me and for many of us who are committed to making changes around climate change. This is going to be a massively significant setback in what we know about the urgency to act on climate. And I hold that and know that, and I, you said we're not political analysts, but I am a political animal. I have been deeply involved in the work of political engagement when I take off my Climate Psychiatry Alliance hat and do other aspects of what's important for me. What I'm experiencing though, which is so different than 2016, and I've heard it from a lot of people, I am not overwhelmingly devastated. I'm more numb. And the capacity to experience and think and know that is separated from an onslaught of feelings of devastation is something that I'm experiencing. And I'm seeing that kind of in certain groups or some of my patients, although some, one came in weeping, as was true of many people in 2016. But I'm not seeing that across the board. I think Josh is so right that there's been this anxiety and split among the two different ends of the spectrum. But I think one of the things that we as climate activists and leaders in the realm of climate emotions need to grapple with is the evidence that keeps coming out that youth are very distressed, that there's a growing population that's grappling with climate emotions and climate distress. Yet, climate change was not on the agenda for this political campaign. It was intentionally set aside and people did not vote as if climate mattered. And that's true of youth, did not vote as if climate was going to be an issue for this election. And there's also, as Josh has already alluded to, ways that I have been, and many, many have been very surprised about how the electorate did vote. The large number of Hispanics who voted for Trump, the large number, the much larger number of women and white women who voted for Trump, that was very unexpected. And that across the board, all over the country, even in swing and red states, even in swing and blue states, the move toward a Republican red position was much greater than any of us expected. And all of those are things that we need to figure out and grapple with and understand what then creates the situation, as Josh said, that creates the emotional response and the psychological response to holding on to certain ideas. Yes, yes. And looking, looking at the way that the electorate turned out, Robin, gosh, looking at that and putting that together with what Josh is mentioning around anxieties, fears of an unstable future driving people on both sides of the aisle to vote the way they did, it, it pulls together for me. I think what is making me feel the most uneasy is that people are voting or people did vote around how to gain a sense of control, I think, and how in a sense of loss of control, as the economy and, you know, globalization is, is making so many in the United States feel kind of isolated or are not in control of their, their futures, and climate change looming makes people feel not in control of their futures. People reacted to, from what I can tell, a leader that was ready to declare domination of, of women, of nature, of vulnerable people that really projected this sense of masculinity, hyper-masculinity and dominance. And it's unsettling as a woman and as a climate advocate to be in a space where I'm feeling like the reaction of people trying to dominate these problems or dominate the uncertainty is kind of coming at, it feels like it's coming at me from both sides, like invalidating to me as a woman involved in activism with a rhetoric that invalidates women's role in even the workplace. Um, a dismissiveness of femininity is something that could have any positive contribution to the society and, and a projection from the, um, the side of Trump's campaign of this hyper-masculinity is we can take control over this and project our traditional values and, and reclaim something versus what is something we learn in non-Western cultures, like indigenous cultures, that, that rematriation, that emphasis on femininity is what is really key to restoring balance with nature, um, and with moving forward. And so to feel the hyper-masculine dominance come in and really dismissing women's rights, femininity, and connection with nature, it all feels connected to me in a way that is unsettling and feels like this, um, vulgar rhetoric around, you know, drill, baby, drill, and your body, my choice, which is the rhetoric that's coming out in reaction to the election, all feels kind of the same. It's this invasive hyper-dominance that, um, we got to be steeled against and recognize it for what it is, and as really detracting from what, um, is the hopeful direction of a climate movement to connect with nature and to, to value the feminine, equality, justice, intersectionality, um, in the climate movement, so. Well, it's really an, um, this election, I believe, and the outcome is multifactorial, and I think that there's, it's been like almost the perfect storm for, um, for Trump, with many factors coming together. And no doubt, I do believe that, um, views of, of women and misogyny and, um, and race and racism are a component of, uh, I, I don't think it's something that people will say outright, and I think some of it is unconscious, but the idea of voting for a woman and a woman of color who will lead the powerful military that we should be is something that didn't, it didn't sit well for a sector, for a sector. But again, I want to remind people, we are still a very divided country, um, and, um, but there are a lot of other forces, I believe, that contributed to the outcome. And when I talk to voters, and when I have also, uh, uh, listened to those political analysts, kitchen table issues, the economy, the fact that groceries are more expensive, and when I go to the market, I can only buy three bags of groceries, where before I could buy seven with the same amount of money, are significant. What I find interesting is what Josh says about the psychological ability to actually ignore real facts, and that the facts about the economy are changing and improving dramatically, and also to ignore anything about what the economic situation that emerged out of COVID, and how our U.S. economy has done better than all others in recovering from that COVID epidemic. How we as psychiatrists can think about those splits in keeping real facts out of our minds, and how then people respond with a really big gut sense. And I think Trump represents someone powerful who will fix things for some people. Yeah, and Robin, I, um, I have seen a lot of reactions online that are really digging into furthering these divides, not only letting them exist and reacting to them at the polling booth, but furthering them, saying, well, if I find out one person voted this way, well, then don't talk to me. And that's an angry urge, a valid reaction to feeling betrayed, and feeling, um, othered by the, you know, opposing political side. And I think this is happening on all angles, all sides of the aisle. We seem to be a fragmented bunch, and especially online right now, a fragmented bunch. What advice do we have to help people through that urge to fragment right now? Emily, could I jump back to one thing first, and then I'm happy to try to give some thoughts on that. But one would be that, to Robin's point, you know, how is it that people are kind of sort of being deluded by the facts, or they're not as anxious about these realities of Trump having been involved with a, you know, insurrection for the Capitol, or that Trump is saying, drill, baby, drill, or things, things that should feel like they're, um, no-brainers, this is a convicted felon. And I think that if you are worried about the economy, and you're worried about your day-to-day life, you don't have the mental bandwidth, the emotional bandwidth to deal with things that feel just a little bit more abstract, or just a little less acute. The analogy that I find actually has been resonating for me is, you know, if you're on an ice sheet in Antarctica, and it breaks off, right, and all of a sudden, you're adrift in this, you know, uh, ridiculous situation, your first thoughts are probably going to be, how the heck do I stay warm? How do I get my food? All these necessity, Maslow hierarchy, and need base of the pyramid kinds of questions. You're ultimately going to have to realize that that, that sheet of ice that you're on is going to melt in the next month, and that if you don't start figuring out how to deal with that, or even, in fact, if you start making a fire on that ice sheet to try to stay warmer now, you're just ultimately hastening your, your demise. But for the people who are sitting around their kitchen table, and they're saying, look, I don't have the food that I need for my family. I'm worried about, you know, just the safety of my family, because I've been told that there are all these immigrants, these dangerous immigrants who are coming into the country. That distracts you, and that basically eliminates the, the bandwidth you have to deal with something like climate change. I think that's why climate change was not on the ballot for a lot of people. Well, I think that's part of it. And I think that there, there are, in a way, I love your analogy, Josh. I think Trump promised, I'm going to freeze up that little ice bed that you're on, and I'm going to attach it back to the larger ice sheet that it has fallen off from. I can fix all those things. I don't know if that's, but that kind of sense that there is someone that powerful. But I also do think that there's, you, you brought up the voting for someone who's led an insurrection, someone who's a felon, someone who is known to lie over and over and over again. I think the many people who voted for Trump know that about him, and they don't think it matters. They believe or say, and I've had people say this at the door to me, well, you know, we can expect that and everyone, everyone lies. And I had one woman say, I trust him. He tells the truth, a voter at the door. And I said, well, but he lies. And I said a few things. And she says, yeah, but he says what he's feeling. And that I believe in. Now, that's a kind of way of dismissing some realities that are occurring that I think we as psychiatrists and psychologists need to grapple with that ability to dismiss important things that have an impact on and and guide voters. I don't think that this is uniform. I think voters are one block. But well, and I think this kind of loops back into Emily's question about how do we try to address how people are feeling so alienated and not wanting to interact with the other side in a way, Robin. There, I think, is this feeling that people are when I say this feeling, this feeling from our side that like the other side, the people who voted for Trump are somehow insane. They're somehow like trying to bring back this dark, medieval, like chauvinistic, racist culture to America. And, you know, what you were saying, Robin, about that person is she was feeling like somehow Trump was being earnest and honest in a way that she liked. And I sooner think that it goes back to what I was originally saying about psychological defenses. People can do all different sorts of gymnastics to try to believe that what they're seeing is real to feel better. We know our brains do that all the time, right? There are all these types of visual, what are they called, when you're looking at illusions or basically, you know, your mind tries to put together the pieces in a way to reconstruct a reality that makes sense. And I think that when you're so emotionally overwhelmed, that's what people are doing. They're able to somehow completely obliterate that cognitive dissonance that this is a person who has been shown to lie over and over and over again, because emotionally, he makes them feel better. So the brain is able to jump those steps to make it happen. And just to finish this thought, going back to your point, Emily, I think that the left or the people who feel so dejected have to not feel like the other side is a bunch of racist, sexist people, but really emotionally distraught people who are feeling really lost and their brains are trying to make sense of it all. And they've made sense of it by voting in Trump. And that in psychiatry all the time, when people are depressed, when people have an eating disorder, we almost externalize it. We say, gosh, your eating disorder is making you do a lot of things right now. You don't blame the person. And I think in a similar way, we can't blame the people, many of the people. And that's not to say that there aren't, I think a lot of bad players out there who are manipulating people's anxieties, but most people are in a significantly anxious state that's not rational. I want to underscore what you're saying. There's no question that we all seek information and ideas that support what we believe. And all of us do that. And so you've used the word, Josh, mental gymnastics. We all do that mental gymnastics to shape the world according to the way we experience it, feel it, and see it. But there is a more insidious, non-psychological component. There is a conscious, systematic effort to create misinformation and to provide lots and lots of sophisticated social media using artificial intelligence. There are systematic efforts to distort facts in a way that both present a view and a problem and a solution, but also are intentionally designed to create confusion. And that's a really significant change in our world that I think is going to take a lot of thinking on our parts to figure out how we're going to address that. I don't know the answers, but I think that those are big problems. And sometimes to me, it feels like we're just little pawns in the game of power for big forces. There's something else I want to address, though, as we've talked about this split and making the other the bad guy. And I do think it's very ripe on social media. You younger people know that much better than I. But I will tell you, when I have knocked on doors and talked to people, Trump voters have not been uniformly mean, nasty, unkind, inattentive. There have been some. I mean, one guy told me I better get off his property or he's going to stick his dogs on me and other things like that. But I've also had very, very kind, thoughtful people talk to me about their ideas that are different than mine. And so I think we have to be cautious about just also seeing the world as completely split. And it's one of the gems I feel as I talk with people who are different than me. Yes. And the urge to push other members of the world away misses the opportunity right now where everyone is sitting here thinking, how did this happen? What are people reacting to trying to do the same sort of dissection of this huge event that we are sitting here right now trying to do? There's an opportunity here for us to ask questions of one another and engage and learn and listen. And if we miss that opportunity now, we miss an opportunity to eventually share non-misinformation, true information that might help shift feelings and opinions over time. The urge to push others away and say, well, I'm going to cut people out is a bit dangerous. Maintaining firm boundaries to protect your own safety is important. And finding a way to balance that with, and how can I lean into and listen to people that I don't immediately agree with is so important. And what's going to be from a collective standpoint, healing. So we can't miss the opportunity of this kind of fresh wound in all of our relationships with each other to heal and to find some movement. I want to just jump on something that both of you are saying, which is, you know, Emily, you're focusing on the need for healing, the need for making sure that we're not alienating the other or othering each other. And Robin, I think that you pointed on something, which is there are bad players out right now who are trying to fan the flames. And I just wanted to take a moment to emphasize that. I think that while it's important to realize that we're all just trying to make sense of our anxieties and try to build a future that's going to feel safer. There are people who are actively feeding the public misinformation and psychologically manipulating a lot of America into believing in a form of reality that is honestly like a bastardization of what reality is. And this alludes to what you were saying, Robin, about what the economy is really doing and why it's doing what it's doing, or, you know, so much about even things like climate change. I think that as psychiatrists, we need to be at the front line of what I think is psychological warfare of what the right is doing in many ways. It's perhaps a little bit bombastic to call it that, but I think that they are following a trope that we see all the time with emotionally abused individuals, right? We're seeing them create a lot of anxiety in the abused. They're causing them to be alienated from the other side. They're leading to a distortion of reality, and they're leading the abused person to feel dependent upon them to rectify everything, right? Trump has become a savior of sorts psychologically to the right. And I think that it is really the work of mental health providers, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers to use their tools, the ones that we use all the time to help individuals suffering from emotional abuse, to provide mass psychoeducation and support for a population that is undergoing emotional abuse. I don't have the answers for how we do that, but I think that there are things from the clinic that are very relevant to the public that we need to bring to bear. And just as we do with patients, we want to be driven by the reality principle, what is really happening, and not move away from that. And I think it's really incumbent on us at this moment in time to make it very, very clear what the ramifications of this election are for many things, but for us particularly for the climate issue. And I think there are profound things. There is one statement that I totally agree with Trump on. Elections have consequences, he said after 2016. And by God, this election will have profound consequences and major setbacks for the climate movement. And we know that we don't have time for the climate issue to be addressed. We don't have four or more years to sit this out. And some of these things that Josh has indicated, the bad players, this is driven by a capitalist drive for profit, and it is also driven by international efforts for power changes. And I think Trump will be very effective this time around with a tighter leadership. And he will direct, and I believe he will, direct the assaults on governmental agencies and the projects, what he calls cleaning up the swamp. And I think there will be a dismantling, an elimination, a restructuring, an unfunding of major agencies that we rely on. And he will also, it's already in place, fire many civil servants who have been the experts for decades and replace them with loyalists. And I think the agencies that implement governmental policies that are important to us, the EPA, Health and Human Services, I think that under Health and Human Services, Biden's OCHI, which is the Office of Climate Change and Health Equity, is going to be completely eliminated. I think that there will be major changes in the health agencies, CDC, FDA. He wants to split CDC into small components. FEMA will be impacted. I think that the major change in the structures of government are going to be severe for us to deal with on climate. He will block and reverse major policies that have occurred under the Biden administration on clean energy, clean air, clean water, and the regulations. And right now, there are eight waivers waiting to be passed that allow California and other states to have higher standards for emissions that are sitting unfinished, and those are likely to be eliminated. He will expand fossil fuel drilling on federal lands, those places that we are protected from. Robin, I'm feeling anxious on behalf of the people listening to this podcast, because basically what you're saying is, we're screwed. No. He's going to be horrible. I am saying that if we don't face the realities, and we disconnect, and we don't engage, then we are participants in being screwed. And Josh, I appreciate your saying you're anxious. Yes, be anxious. This is not something that feels good or nice. There is real place for worry, but the worry and despair cannot impede us from continuing to engage and make alliances with others who are engaging. And I will tell you, in the last few days, there have been massive meetings, large meetings on webinars and such about groups saying, we cannot give up. We must continue to confront this. We will, and we will devise ways to do so. So you speak to the anxiety, and you speak to the sense that those listening are going to feel, oh my God, it's so horrible. But we have to persist, and we have to persist because the stakes are too great. And I will tell you also, the whole election was not horrible. The whole election did not, but it was at local and state levels. There were victories around climate in the Washington state elections, where the Washington state voters continued their efforts around climate change. And in California, we passed a major bond for climate activities. And Maryland State Medical Society has activated and passed a fossil fuel resolution. And that's happening over and over. Maybe what we have to do is move to thinking about what we can do now at local, regional, and state levels. The task of our advocacy feels bigger than it did before. But that doesn't mean that we can become disengaged, that we can succumb to despair, that we can sit this out. It's maybe even a harder task to just stay connected right now. But even that has a goal for people to get through these next few weeks, to stay engaged, to stay connected, and then aim to continue the fight, continue the efforts that we're making here in CPA and in other advocacy organizations. It's just so critical. So I want to ask one last question before we close out, which is, as people are dealing with their own emotional reactions to the election, what are some healthy coping strategies that can help us stay connected, stay engaged, so that we don't get detached from the larger task up ahead for us now? I think that's such a great question. And in some ways, the work on trying to address climate anxiety is informative. Knowing that there are people in leadership who are actively doing a lot to try to address climate change in the midst of everything that will be going on and the administrative change is important. Knowing that we have a lot of Democratic governors who are going to be able to do a lot on the state level, knowing that we have a lot of nonprofit organizations that are putting a lot of funding now into trying to study how climate change is impacting health and mental health, like the Wellcome Trust, the Burroughs Wellcome, other private foundations, that's all really reassuring. So know that your folks in power are still able to do things to getting connected to other communities of people who are thinking about, worrying about, and working on climate change is huge. We know that there are things like climate cafes or different groups of people who come together to talk about how they're feeling and thinking about climate change. You can find those on the Climate Psychology Alliance, on Psychiatry Alliance also is able to help keep people connected in our professional network. Making sure that you're working on maintaining what we call that dialectic or holding what feel like opposite truths. Well, there's a lot to feel hopeless about right now. There's also a lot, as Robin was alluding to, about on the state level, on the local level, to feel hopeful about. And so both can be true at the same time and working to hold those. And making sure that if we're trying to put a life preserver on the youth and the young people around us, that we're also putting that on ourselves, addressing our own climate distress, and helping them to provide age-appropriate education and all of the other good stuff that goes into providing psychological support to young people who feel, as Robin said in the very beginning, particularly vulnerable, particularly angry at government. I'm not sure that I can add much to what Josh has said. And what I particularly like is Josh identifying that we can do more than one thing at one time. And I think we do need to hold the emotional experiences, make space for it, come together in groups and community that recognize and give a space for talking about those feelings. Josh mentioned the climate cafes, but there are a whole variety of things like that I think are essential, because that's a part of taking care of ourselves and the many other ways we take care of ourselves. And then I think we simultaneously need to work with others on addressing some of the policy issues and also the way we can be leaders in education on the mental health impacts, on climate change. We can also more robustly use our professional organizations as vehicles for advocacy and voice. What I basically think we need to do in addition to evaluating the outcome of the election is up our game in what we've been doing. Robin, what you've just shared about holding the emotional space right now, I think is a last note I'd love to emphasize, that these feelings are not ones we can let anyone shame us about or make us feel, they're not feelings we can let anyone shame us about or make us feel guilted into immediate action or overwhelmed to the point of immediate decision around inaction. The space that we need to grieve what hope there was ahead of us, or the space that we need to grieve this result is necessary. And grief involves lots of different emotions and looks different for different people and it will come in stages. And this is what we know from how we help people going through all sorts of grief, that we'll see anger, that we'll see sadness, that we'll see bargaining, we'll see eventual repair and acceptance. And that's the place where we need people to get. And we need people to feel their emotions, make it through those emotions to get to the side where they're ready to be back in action. And so for anyone listening who's feeling overwhelmed or angry or sad or questioning themselves or what they thought they knew, that's okay. And we can still all come together in the end and keep moving forward. And I hope that's reassurance to someone listening as they're feeling what they're feeling now. That's where I'm at too. I'm there with you. I just want to end with what we've often said. Hope is not about the outcome. Hope is a verb. And that hope is generated by our involvement, not by just thinking that we're going to win it all. That's right, Robin. Thank you. Hope is a verb. We can mobilize our hope with action. So to our listeners, thank you so much for the action of tuning into this podcast today. It's brought to you by the Climate Psychiatry Alliance. And remember that every small step towards sustainability and mental health awareness moves the needle. For more information on climate change and mental health, visit climateschiatry.org. And if you like this podcast and want to support our advocacy efforts, join us or donate to the Climate Psychiatry Alliance at climateschiatry.org today. All right, folks. With that, we'll say stay connected, stay informed, and let's work together for a healthier planet and healthier minds.